BOOK THREE The Book of the Divine Mother CANTO ONE   THE PURSUIT OF THE UNKNOWABLE   ALL is too little that the world can give: Its power and knowledge are the gifts of Time And cannot fill the spirit's sacred thirst. Although of One these forms of greatness are And by its breath of grace our lives abide, Although more near to us than nearness' self, It is some utter truth of what we are; Hidden by its own works it seemed far off, Impenetrable, occult, voiceless, obscure. The Presence was lost by which all things have charm, The Glory lacked of which they are dim sig

  CANTO THREE   THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRIT AND THE NEW CREATION   A MIGHTIER task remained than all he had done. To that he turned from which all being comes, A sign attending from the Secrecy Which knows the Truth ungrasped behind our thoughts And guards the world with its all-seeing gaze. In the unapproachable stillness of his soul, Intense, one-pointed, monumental, lone Patient he sat like an incarnate hope Motionless on a pedestal of prayer. A Strength he sought that was not yet on earth, Help from a Power too great for mortal will, The Light of a Truth now only

  CANTO THREE   SATYAVAN AND SAVITRI   OUT of the voiceless mystery of the past In a present ignorant of forgotten bonds These spirits met upon the roads of Time. Yet in the heart their secret conscious selves At once aware grew of each other warned By the first call of a delightful voice And a first vision of the destined face. As when being cries to being from its depths Behind the screen of the external sense And strives to find the heart-disclosing word, The passionate speech revealing the soul's need, But the mind's ignorance veils the inner sight, Only a little breaks through our earth-m

  CANTO ELEVEN   THE KINGDOMS AND GODHEADS OF THE GREATER MIND   THERE ceased the limits of the labouring Power. But being and creation cease not there. For Thought transcends the circles of mortal mind, It is greater than its earthly instrument: The godhead crammed into mind's narrow space Escapes on every side into some vast That is a passage to infinity. It moves eternal in the spirit's field, A runner towards the far spiritual light, A child and servant of the spirit's force. But mind too falls back from a nameless

  CANTO THREE   THE YOGA OF THE KING: THE YOGA OF THE SOUL'S RELEASE   A WORLD'S desire compelled her mortal birth. One in the front of the immemorial quest, Protagonist of the mysterious play In which the Unknown pursues himself through forms And limits his eternity by the hours And the blind Void struggles to live and see, A thinker and toiler in the ideal's air, Brought down to earth's dumb need her radiant power. His was a spirit that stooped from larger spheres Into our province of ephemeral sight, A colonist from immortality. A pointing beam on earth's uncertain roads,

  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

  CANTO FOUR    THE SECRET KNOWLEDGE   ON a height he stood that looked towards greater heights. Our early approaches to the Infinite Are sunrise splendours on a marvellous verge While lingers yet unseen the glorious sun, What now we see is a shadow of what must come. The earth's uplook to a remote unknown Is a preface only of the epic climb Of human soul from its flat earthly state To the discovery of a greater self And the far gleam of an eternal Light. This world is a beginning and a base Where Life and Mind erect their

  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 an

  BOOK TWELVE Epilogue EPILOGUE   THE RETURN TO EARTH   OUT of abysmal trance her spirit woke. Lain on the earth-mother's calm inconscient breast She saw the green-clad branches lean above Guarding her sleep with their enchanted life, And overhead a blue-winged ecstasy Fluttered from bough to bough with high-pitched call. Into the magic secrecy of the woods Peering through an emerald lattice-window of leaves, In indolent skies reclined, the thinning day Turned to its slow fall into evening's peace. She pressed the living body of Satyavan: On her body's wordless joy to be and breathe

  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 in its lone niche of templed strength M