CANTO THREE   THE DEBATE OF LOVE AND DEATH     A SAD destroying cadence the voice sank; It seemed to lead the advancing march of Life Into some still original Inane. But Savitri answered to almighty Death: "O dark-browed sophist of the universe Who veilst the Real with its own Idea, Hiding with brute objects Nature's living face, Masking eternity with thy dance of death, Thou hast woven the ignorant Mind into a screen And made of Thought error's purveyor and scribe, And a false witness of mind's servant sense. An aesthete of the sorrow of the world, Champion of a harsh and sad philosoph

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 destiny's changeless scene Filling

BOOK SIX   The Book of Fate   CANTO ONE   THE WORD OF FATE     IN silent bounds bordering the mortal's plane Crossing a wide expanse of brilliant peace Narad the heavenly sage from Paradise Came chanting through the large and lustrous air. Attracted by the golden summer-earth That lay beneath him like a glowing bowl Tilted upon a table of the Gods, Turning as if moved round by an unseen hand To catch the warmth and blaze of a small sun, He passed from the immortals' happy .paths To a world of toil and quest and grief and hope, To these rooms of a see-saw game of death and life. Across an intangible border o

CANTO FOUR   THE TRIPLE SOUL-FORCES     HERE from a low and prone and listless ground The passion of the first ascent began; A moon-bright face in a sombre cloud of hair, A Woman sat in a pale lustrous robe. A rugged and ragged soil was her bare seat, Beneath her feet a sharp and wounding stone. A divine pity on the peaks of the world, A spirit touched by the grief of all that lives, She looked out far and saw from inner mind This questionable world of outward things, Of false appearances and plausible shapes, This dubious cosmos stretched in the ignorant Void, The pangs of earth, the toil and

CANTO TWO   THE WAY OF FATE AND THE PROBLEM  OF PAIN     A SILENCE sealed the irrevocable decree, The word of Fate that fell from the heavenly lips Fixing a doom no power could ever reverse Unless heaven's will itself could change its course. Or so it seemed, yet from the silence rose One voice that questioned changeless destiny. A will that strove against the immutable Will, A mother's heart had heard the fateful speech That rang like a sanction to the call of death And came like a chill close to life and hope. Yet hope sank down like an extinguished fire. She felt the leaden inevitable hand Invade the secrecy of her guar

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 life-force pressed into a camp of works And the

CANTO SEVEN1     IN the little hermitage in the forest's heart, In the sunlight and the moonlight and the dark The daily human life went plodding on Even as before with its small unchanging works And its spare outward body of routine And happy quiet of ascetic peace. The old beauty smiled of the terrestrial scene; She too was her old gracious self to men. The Ancient Mother clutched her child to her breast Pressing her close in her environing arms, As if earth ever the same could for ever keep The living spirit and body in her clasp, As if death were not there nor end nor change. Accustomed only to read outward

    CANTO TWO   THE JOURNEY IN ETERNAL NIGHT AND THE VOICE OF THE DARKNESS     A WHILE on the chill dreadful edge of Night All stood as if a world were doomed to die And waited on the eternal silence' brink. Heaven leaned towards them like a cloudy brow Of menace through the dim and voiceless hush. As thoughts stand mute on a despairing verge Where the last depths plunge into nothingness And the last dreams must end, they paused, in their front Were glooms like shadowy wings, behind them pale The lifeless evening was a dead man's gaze. Hungry beyond, the night desired her soul. But still