BOOK FIVE The Book of Love CANTO ONE   THE DESTINED MEETING-PLACE   BUT now the destined spot and hour were close; Unknowing she had neared her nameless goal. For though a dress of blind and devious chance Is laid upon the work of all-wise Fate, Our acts interpret an omniscient Force That dwells in the compelling stuff of things, And nothing happens in the cosmic play But at its time and in its foreseen place.') To a space she came of soft and delicate air That seemed a sanctuary of youth and joy, A highland world of free and green delight Where spring and summer lay together and strove In indolent and amicable d

  CANTO SIX   NIRVANA AND THE DISCOVERY OF THE ALL-NEGATING ABSOLUTE   A CALM slow sun looked down from tranquil heavens. A routed sullen rearguard of retreat, The last rains had fled murmuring across the woods Or failed, a sibilant whisper mid the leaves, And the great blue enchantment of the sky Recovered the deep rapture of its smile. Its mellow splendour unstressed by storm-licked heats Found room for a luxury of warm mild days, The night's gold treasure of autumnal moons Came floating shipped through ripples of fairy air. And Savitri's life was glad, fulfilled like earth's; She had found

  CANTO THREE   THE ENTRY INTO THE INNER COUNTRIES   AT first out of the busy hum of mind As if from a loud thronged market into a cave By an inward moment's magic she had come, A stark hushed emptiness became her self: Her mind unvisited by the voice of thought Stared at a void deep's dumb infinity. Her heights receded, her depths behind her closed; All fled away from her and left her blank. But when she came back to her self of thought, Once more she was a human thing on earth, A lump of Matter, a house of closed sight, A mind compelled to think out ignorance, A li

  CANTO FIFTEEN   THE KINGDOMS OF THE GREATER KNOWLEDGE   AFTER a measureless moment of the soul Again returning to these surface fields Out of the timeless depths where he had sunk, He heard once more the slow tread of the hours. All once perceived and lived was far away; Himself was to himself his only scene, Above the Witness and his universe He stood in a realm of boundless silences Awaiting the Voice that spoke and built the worlds. A light was round him wide and absolute, A diamond purity of eternal sight; A consciousness lay still, devoid of forms, Fre

  CANTO FOUR   THE QUEST   THE world-ways opened before Savitri. At first a strangeness of new brilliant scenes Peopled her mind and kept her body's gaze. But as she moved across the changing earth A deeper consciousness welled up in her: A citizen of many scenes and climes, Each soil and country it has made its home; It took all clans and peoples for her own, Till the whole destiny of mankind was hers. These unfamiliar spaces on her way Were known and neighbours to a sense within; Landscapes recurred like lost forgotten fields, Cities and rivers and plains her vision claimed Like slow-recu

  BOOK EIGHT The Book of Death CANTO THREE*   DEATH IN THE FOREST   NOW it was here in this great golden dawn By her still sleeping husband lain she gazed Into her past as one about to die Looks back upon the sunlit fields of life Where he too ran and sported with the rest, Lifting his head above the huge dark stream Into whose depths he must for ever plunge. All she had been and done she lived again. The whole year in a swift and eddying race Of memories swept through her and fled away Into the irrecoverable past.

  CANTO FOUR   THE KINGDOMS OF THE LITTLE LIFE   A QUIVERING trepidant uncertain world Born from that dolorous meeting and eclipse Appeared in the emptiness where her feet had trod, A quick obscurity, a seeking stir. There was a writhing of half-conscious force Hardly awakened from inconscient sleep And tied to an instinct-driven Ignorance, To find itself and find its hold on things. Inheritor of poverty and loss, Assailed by memories that fled when seized, Haunted by a forgotten uplifting hope, It strove with a blindness as of groping hands To fill the aching and disastrous ga

  CANTO EIGHT   THE WORLD OF FALSEHOOD, THE MOTHER OF EVIL AND THE SONS OF DARKNESS   THEN could he see the hidden heart of Night: The labour of its stark unconsciousness Revealed the endless terrible Inane. A spiritless blank Infinity was there; A Nature that denied the eternal Truth In the vain braggart freedom of its thought Hoped to abolish God and reign alone. There was no sovereign Guest, no witness Light; Unhelped it would create its own bleak world. Its large blind eyes looked out on demon acts, Its deaf ears heard the untruth its dumb lips spoke; Its huge misgui

-51_ sri aurobindo's letters on savitri.htm SRI AUROBINDO'S LETTERS ON "SAVITRI" NOTE   These letters are published at the end of Savitri for their rare value as a great poet's informal self-commentary. Apropos that value, a few facts of deep personal interest may be mentioned about the coming of this poem to its close.     Some months before his passing, Sri Aurobindo, as if in foreknowledge of the event, said: "I want to finish Savitri soon." The words took by utter surprise the disciple, his scribe, who had been used to the grandly patient way in which so far it had been composed and frequently retouched and amplified. Even when, in the past, composition had been ex

  CANTO TWO   THE PARABLE OF THE SEARCH FOR THE SOUL   AS in the vigilance of the sleepless night Through the slow heavy-footed silent hours, Repressing in her bosom its load of grief, She sat staring at the dumb tread of Time And the approach of ever-nearing Fate, A summons from her being's summit came, A sound, a call that broke the seals of Night. Above her brows where will and knowledge meet A mighty Voice invaded mortal space. It seemed to come from inaccessible heights And yet was intimate with all the world And knew the meaning of the steps of Time And saw eternal