CANTO TWO   SATYAVAN     A LL she remembered on this day of Fate, The road that hazarded not the solemn depths But turned away to flee to human homes, The wilderness with its mighty monotone, The morning like a lustrous seer above, The passion of the summits lost in heaven, The titan murmur of the endless woods. As if a wicket gate to joy were there Ringed in with voiceless hint and magic sign, Upon the margin of an unknown world Reclined the curve of a sun-held recess; Groves with strange flowers like eyes of gazing nymphs Peered from their secrecy into open space, Boughs whispering to a constancy of light

CANTO FIVE   THE FINDING OF THE SOUL     ONWARD she passed seeking the soul's mystic cave. At first she stepped into a night of God. The light was quenched that helps the labouring world, The power that struggles and stumbles in our life, This inefficient mind gave up its thoughts, The striving heart its unavailing hopes. All Knowledge failed and the Idea's forms, And Wisdom screened in awe her lowly head Feeling a Truth too great for thought or speech, Formless, ineffable, for ever the same. An innocent and holy Ignorance Adored like one who worships formless God The unseen light she could not claim nor own. In a simple p

BOOK TEN   The Book of the Double Twilight   CANTO ONE   THE DREAM TWILIGHT OF THE IDEAL     ALL still was darkness dread and desolate; There was no change nor any hope of change. In this black dream which was a house of Void, A walk to Nowhere in a land of Nought, Ever they drifted without aim or goal; Gloom led to worse gloom, death to an emptier death, In some positive Non-Being's purposeless Vast Through formless wastes dumb and unknowable. An ineffectual beam of suffering light Through the despairing darkness dogged their steps Like the remembrance of a glory lost; Even while it grew, it seemed

CANTO TWO   THE GOSPEL OF DEATH AND VANITY OF THE IDEAL     THEN pealed the calm inexorable voice: Abolishing hope, cancelling life's golden truths, Fatal its accents smote the trembling air. That lovely world swam thin and frail, most like Some pearly evanescent farewell gleam On the faint verge of dusk in moonless eves. "Prisoner of Nature, many-visioned spirit, Thought's creature in the ideal's realm enjoying Thy unsubstantial immortality The subtle marvellous mind of man has feigned, This is the world from which thy yearnings came. When it would build eternity from the dust, Man's thought paints images illusion rounds;

CANTO FOUR   THE DREAM TWILIGHT OF THE EARTHLY REAL     THERE came a slope that slowly downward sank; It slipped towards a stumbling grey descent. The dim-heart marvel of the ideal was lost, Its crowding wonder of bright delicate dreams And vague half-limned sublimities she had left: Thought fell towards lower levels, hard and tense It passioned for some crude reality. The twilight floated still but changed its hues And heavily swathed a less delightful dream; It settled in tired masses on the air; Its symbol colours tuned with duller reds And almost seemed a lurid mist of day. A straining taut and dire be

PART THREE   (Books IX-XII)   BOOK NINE   The Book of Eternal Night   CANTO ONE   TOWARDS THE BLACK VOID     SO was she left alone in the huge wood, Surrounded by a dim unthinking world, Her husband's corpse on her forsaken breast. She measured not her loss with helpless thoughts, Nor rent with tears the marble seals of pain: She rose not yet to face the dreadful god. Over the body she loved her soul leaned out In a great stillness without stir or voice, As if her mind had died with Satyavan. But still the human heart in her beat on. Aware still of his being near to hers, Closely she clas

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 s

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;