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 philosophy Thou hast used

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.

Canto Two The Journey in Eternal Night and the Voice of the Darkness Awhile 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 te

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,

Canto Two The Growth of the Flame A land of mountains and wide sun-beat plains And giant rivers pacing to vast seas, A field of creation and spiritual hush, Silence swallowing life's acts into the deeps, Of thought's transcendent climb and heavenward leap, A brooding world of reverie and trance, Filled with the mightiest works of God and man, Where Nature seemed a dream of the Divine And beauty and grace and grandeur had their home, Harboured the childhood of the incarnate Flame. Over her watched millenn

Book Eleven The Book of Everlasting Day Canto One The Eternal Day: The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme Consummation A marvellous sun looked down from ecstasy's skies On worlds of deathless bliss, perfection's home, Magical unfoldings of the Eternal's smile Capturing his secret heart-beats of delight. God's everlasting day surrounded her, Domains appeared1 of sempiternal light Invading all Nature with the Absolute's joy. Her body quivered with eternity's touch, Her soul stood close to the founts of the infinite. Infinity's finite fronts she lived in, new For ever to an everlasting sight. Et

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 speed of the st

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 cla