BOOK SIX

The Book of Fate

Canto One

The Word of Fate

IN SILENT bounds bordering the mortal's plane

Narad the heavenly sage from Paradise

Attracted by the golden summer-earth

Tilted upon a table of the Gods,

To catch the warmth and blaze of a small sun,

To a world of toil and quest and grief and hope,

Across an intangible border of soul-space

Amid the inventions of the inconscient Self

Below him circling burned the myriad suns:

A primal Air brought the first joy of touch;

Contracting and expanding this huge world

The secret might of the creative Fire

Its infinitesimal wave-sparks' weaving dance,

Magic foundation and pattern of a world,

He felt a sap of life, a sap of death;

Plunging and its obscure oneness of forms

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He beheld the cosmic Being at his task,

His inner gaze the movements of the soul,

And looked upon the life of beasts and men.

A rapture and a pathos moved his voice;

And oneness and pure everlasting bliss,

His chant was a hymn of Ignorance and Fate.

And joy and passion of the mystic world,

And the mute regions stirred with the throb of a Soul.

Its power omnipotent knowing not what it does,

Its blind unerring occult mystery,

And Love that broods within the dim abyss

And death that climbs to immortality.

And the Mother-Wisdom hid in Nature's breast

And the miracle of her transforming hands,

And Mind subliminal in mindless life,

He sang of the glory and marvel still to be born,

Of bodies made divine and life made bliss,

Heart sensing heart, thought looking straight at thought,

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And the transfiguration and the ecstasy.

Foreseeing the end of their long dreadful task

And glad release from their self-chosen doom

He who has conquered the Immortals' seats,

As darts a lightning streak, a glory fell

Looked out from luminous cloud and, strangely limned,

Appearing in light descended where arose

In Madra, flowering up in delicate stone.

At his side a creature beautiful, passionate, wise,

Skyward from its earth-seat through luminous air,

There for an hour untouched by the earth's siege

Inclining to the high and rhythmic voice,

Spoke of the toils of men and what the gods

The marvel and the mystery of pain.

With all its thousand luminous buds of truth,

It trembles at each touch, it strives to wake

And in the garden of the Spouse shall bloom

A mighty shuddering coil of ecstasy

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Out of her Matter's stupor, her mind's dreams,

Even as he sang and rapture stole through earth-time

As of her swift heart hastening, Savitri;

A happy wonder in her fathomless gaze,

Her eyes rich with a shining mist of joy

Discharging the proud mission of her heart,

To her love and its luminous eternity,

And, eager for beauty on discovered earth

Saw like a rose of marvel, worshipping,

He flung on her his vast immortal look;

And reining back knowledge from his immortal lips

The flame-born, and round her illumined head

Move flashing about her? From what green glimmer of glades

Or half-seen verge of waters moon-betrayed

Earth has gold-hued expanses, shadowy hills

And, guarded in a cloistral joy of woods,

Seized by the curved incessant yearning hands

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They lose their souls on beds of trembling reeds.

In which some spirit's immortal bliss is felt,

There hast thou paused, and marvelling borne eyes

To strain its rapture through thy listening soul?

It would say thou hast not drunk from an earthly cup,

Thou wast surrounded on a magic verge

Assailed by trooping voices of delight

In faery woods, led down the gleaming slopes

Thy limbs have shared the sports which none has seen,

Thy mortal bosom quivered with god-speech

What feet of gods, what ravishing flutes of heaven

Approaching through the soft and revelling air,

Thy silence on some red strange-ecstasied fruit

Reveal, O winged with light, whence thou hast flown

Thy body rhythmical with the spring-bird's call.

Only with their own beauty and the thrill

A heavenly jar, thy firm deep-honied heart,

Thou hast not spoken with the kings of pain.

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Far-melodied, rapid and grand, a Centaur's song,

Or mighty as a great chant of many winds.

Thou comest like a silver deer through groves

Or fleest like a wind-goddess through leaves,

Flitting through thickets of thy pure desires

These things are only images to thy earth,

For such is thy spirit, a sister of the gods,

And thou art kin in joy to heaven's sons.

Now only seen through the splendour of thy dreams,

Thyself a being dangerously great,

Has lived walled in by the safety of thy dreams.

Who hunts unseen the unconscious lives of men,

As high, as happy might thy waking be!

He spoke but held his knowledge back from words.

But still holds back the thunder in its heart,

His speech like glimmering music veiled his thoughts;

Pitiful to mortals, only to them it spoke

He hid in his all-knowing mind the rest.

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The veil heaven's pity throws on future pain

But Aswapati answered to the seer; —

An ominous shadow felt behind the words,

Here mid the dangerous contours of earth's life,

"O deathless sage who knowest all things here,

Through the carved shield of symbol images

I might see the steps of a young godlike life

Between the Unknowable and the Unseen

It flames out symbols of the infinite

For it has read and broken the wizard seals;

It has looked across the jewel bars of heaven,

It sees beyond terrestrial common things

Till through the shining gates and mystic streets

Proud deeds step forth, a rank and march of gods.

Earth keeps for man some short and perfect hours

The eternal moment which the deathless live,

Hardly a soul and body here are born

Whose life can keep the paradisal note,

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Tirelessly throbbing through the rapturous air

When she floats gleaming like a cloud of light,

Behold this image cast by light and love,

Perfectly rhymed, a pillared ripple of gold!

Shaped in a splendour of gold-coloured bronze

Dream-made illumined mirrors are her eyes

Retaining heaven's reflections in their depths.

Heaven's lustrous mornings gloriously recur,

In her young spirit yet untouched with tears.

To virgin wonder in her crystal soul.

Marvellous the moon floats on through wondering skies;

The charmed mutations of the enchanter life

If but this joy of life could last, nor pain

Behold her, singer with the prescient gaze,

Shall pour the nectar of a sorrowless life

Heal with her bliss the tired breast of earth

As grows the great and golden bounteous tree

Where with enamoured speed the waters run

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And cling with lyric laughter round the knees

Pearl-bright from moon-gold limbs and cloudy hair,

So casts she her felicity on men.

And surely will that flame set earth alight:

But too often here the careless Mother leaves

The harp of God falls mute, its call to bliss

The strings of the siren Ecstasy cry not here

Of sorrow's songs we have enough: bid once

Or must fire always test the great of soul?

Armoured with love and faith and sacred joy,

Once let unwounded pass a mortal life."

Knowing that words are vain and Fate is lord.

Then, dallying with the mortal's ignorance

"On what high mission went her hastening wheels?

And Paradise made visible in her eyes?

To whom the king, "The red asoca watched

Arisen into an air of flaming dawn

To find her own lord, since to her on earth

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Cleaving her way with the beat of her rapid wings.

Threaded the summer morns and sunlit lands.

And these charmed guardian lips hold treasured still.

Reveal the name thy sudden heart-beats learned.

And Savitri answered with her still calm voice

"Father and king, I have carried out thy will.

I have obeyed my heart, I have heard its call.

Mid Shalwa's giant hills and brooding woods

Blind, exiled, outcast, once a mighty king.

I have met on the wild forest's lonely verge.

Astonished, all sat silent for a space.

A heavy shadow float above the name

He looked into his daughter's eyes and spoke:

If this is all, then all is surely well;

Whether it seem good or evil to men's eyes,

Our destiny is written in double terms:

Out of the darkness we still grow to light.

Death is our road to immortality.

`Cry woe, cry woe,' the world's lost voices wail,

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Yet conquers the eternal Good at last."

In haste broke out and stayed the dangerous word:

Lend not a dangerous vision to the blind

Impose not on the mortal's tremulous breast

Demand not now the Godhead in our acts.

Or Coilas or Vaicountha's starry stair:

Are here where few dare even think to rise;

Chill, slippery, precipitous are the paths.

In their large heavens they dwell exempt from Fate

His limbs that faint beneath the whips of grief,

The future's road is hid from mortal sight:

To light one step in front is all his hope

To meet the riddle of his shrouded fate.

Aware of danger to his uncertain hours

He feels not when the dreadful fingers close

If thou canst loose her grip, then only speak.

Our mind perhaps deceives us with its words

Perhaps the blindness of our will is Fate."

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"O seer, thy bright arrival has been timed

Then let the speech benign of griefless spheres

And sanction joy with thy celestial voice.

Let not our words create the doom they fear.

To raise her ominous head and stare at love.

Happy is Satyavan mid earthly men

And fortunate the forest hermitage

My Savitri will dwell and bring in heaven.

On these bright lives' unstained felicity

Too heavy falls a Shadow on man's heart;

It dreads the blow dogging too vivid joys,

The danger lurking in fortune's proud extremes,

And trembles at the laughter of the gods.

If wings of Evil brood above that house,

And rescue our lives from hazard of wayside doom

And Narad slowly answered to the queen:

Safe doors cry opening near, the doomed pass on.

A torturing burden and a fruitless light

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The eternal poet, universal Mind,

Invisible the giant actors tread

He knows not even what his lips shall speak.

And life is stronger than his trembling soul.

Her eyes are fixed upon her mighty aim;

She has leaped an arrow from the bow of God."

And help by calm the swaying wheels of life

And the trouble and passion of the unquiet world.

The ancient human sentence strike her child,

Only a larger measure given of tears.

A mind proof-armoured mailed in mighty thoughts,

Though to still heavens of knowledge she had risen,

Human was she still and opened her doors to grief;

Of the marble godhead of inflexible Law,

To lives that stand erect and front the World-Power:

Taxed with perversity the impersonal One.

But as a common man beneath his load

So now she arraigned the world's impassive will:

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Emerging from the dark forest's sullen heart,

And wore the beauty of the Shalwa boy?

Armed with a hidden force of ancient wrongs,

Here dreadfully entangled love and hate

Our days are links of a disastrous chain,

Old cruelties come back unrecognised,

Yet all in vain the bitter law was made.

For nothing have we learned, but still repeat

There are dire alchemies of the human heart

Love darkens to the spirit of nether gods.

Woundingly sweet he cannot yet forego,

He visits with his own pangs his quivering prey

As if in love with our own agony.

And grief has other lassoes for our life.

Strength have I my own punishment to bear,

Smitten in the sorrow of scourged and helpless things,

We are not as the gods who know not grief

Calm they gaze down on the little human scene

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An ancient tale of woe can move us still,

We are shaken by the sight of human pain,

Ours not the passionless lids that cannot age.

Our own tragedies are not enough for us,

We have sorrow for a greatness passed away

Even a stranger's anguish rends my heart,

Hide not from us our doom, if doom is ours.

A terror ominous, mute, felt more than seen

A Fate lurking in the shadow of our hearts,

To know is best, however hard to bear."

Forcing to steel the will of Savitri,

The great Gods use the pain of human hearts

They squander lavishly men's blood and tears

This cosmic Nature's balance is not ours

A single word lets loose vast agencies;

So now he set free destiny in that hour.

A marvel of the meeting earth and heavens

His figure is the front of Nature's march,

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A sapphire cutting from the sleep of heaven,

A ray out of the rapturous Infinite,

A divinity and kingliness gird his brow;

As brilliant as a lonely moon in heaven,

Pure like a stream that kisses silent banks,

A living knot of golden Paradise,

Time's joy borrowed out of eternity,

In him soul and Nature, equal Presences,

The Happy in their bright ether have not hearts

That takes all joy as the world's native gift

His speech carries a light of inner truth,

In common things has made veilless his mind,

A tranquil breadth of sky windless and still

A silent space musing and luminous

A green tangle of trees upon a happy hill

These are his images and parallels,

A will to climb lifts a delight to live,

An aspiration to the immortals' air

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His sweetness and his joy attract all hearts

His strength is like a tower built to reach heaven,

O loss, if death into its elements

Shatter this vase before it breathes its sweets,

A treasure thus unique loaned by the gods,

In one brief year when this bright hour flies back

This sovereign glory ends heaven lent to earth,

Heaven's greatness came, but was too great to stay.

This day returning Satyavan must die."

But the queen cried: "Vain then can be heaven's grace!

For Death is a cupbearer of the wine

For a passionate moment by the careless gods.

Mounting thy car go forth, O Savitri,

Alas, in the green gladness of the woods

Choose once again and leave this fated head,

Love's sweetness sleeps in his pale marble hand.

A little joy would buy too bitter an end.

Thy youth and radiance were not born to lie

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A choice less rare may call a happier fate."

Her voice was calm, her face was fixed like steel:

The word I have spoken can never be erased,

The truth once uttered, from the earth's air effaced,

For ever in the memory of Time.

In an eternal moment of the gods.

Its signature adverse Fate cannot efface,

Those who shall part who have grown one being within?

If death take him, I too know how to die.

I am stronger than death and greater than my fate;

Helpless against my immortality.

An adamant will, she cast her speech like bronze.

Rang like the voice of a self-chosen Doom

To her own despair answer the mother made;

Labours amid the sobbing of her hopes

"O child, in the magnificence of thy soul

And dazzled by thy superhuman thoughts,

Here on this mutable and ignorant earth

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All passes here, nothing remains the same.

He whom thou lovest now, a stranger came

His moment's part once done upon life's stage

To other scenes he moves and other players

The body thou hast loved is cast away

To indifferent mighty Nature and becomes

But for our souls, upon the wheel of God

Married and sundered in the magic round

Our emotions are but high and dying notes

By the passionate movements of a seeking Heart

To call down heaven's distant answering song,

Once seized, we lose the heavenly music's sense;

All sweetnesses are baffling symbols here.

Our joys are perfumes in a brittle vase.

To spread life's sails to the hurricane desire

O child, wilt thou proclaim, wilt thou then follow

The autarchy of the rash Titan's mood

In a world where Truth is not, nor Light nor God?

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Thou who art human, think not like a god.

Is given the calm reason as his guide;

As are the actions of the bird and beast;

Like the senseless motion of inconscient things.

Climbs to usurp the kingdom of the gods

In the unreflecting passion of their hearts

And fall and break by their own violent mass:

To choose his steps by reason's vigilant light,

Is given him, for each his difficult goal

Leave not thy goal to follow a beautiful face.

And liv'st in the calm vastness of the One

And love divine replace the human tie.

It bids thee strengthen thy undying spirit;

Of work and thought and measured grave delight

Then is our life a tranquil pilgrimage,

Each dawn opens into a larger Light.

Waking and sleep are opportunities

So canst thou raise thy pure unvanquished spirit,

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Till spread to heaven in a wide vesper calm,

It greatens slowly into timeless peace."

"My will is part of the eternal Will,

My fate is what my spirit's strength can bear;

I have discovered my glad reality

I have found the deep unchanging soul of love.

Or slay, aspiring to white vacant peace,

Out of its infinite solitude and sleep?

The beating of one vast heart in the flame of things,

And, tireless of the sweet abysms of Time,

This, this is first, last joy and to its throb

Are poverty. Nothing to me are death and grief

And what to me are common souls of men

I have no need to draw back from his arms

And journey into a still infinity.

I treasure the rich occasion of my birth:

I shall walk with him like gods in Paradise.

And yet I know this is not all my fate

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And who I am and who he is I love.

I have seen God smile at me in Satyavan;

Then none could answer to her words. Silent

END OF CANTO ONE

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