{"id":1008,"date":"2013-07-13T01:31:57","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1008"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:31:57","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:57","slug":"11-book-7-canto-01-the-joy-of-union-vol-29-savitri-volume-29","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/29-savitri-volume-29\/11-book-7-canto-01-the-joy-of-union-vol-29-savitri-volume-29","title":{"rendered":"-11_Book 7 Canto 01 The Joy of Union.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\tBook Seven<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

The Book of Yoga<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n

 <\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n
\n

Canto One<\/i> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nThe Joy of Union;
\nThe Ordeal of the <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nForeknowledge<\/font> of Death and the
\nHeart’s Grief <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Fate followed her foreseen immutable road.<\/p>\n

Man’s hopes and longings build the journeying wheels<\/p>\n

That bear the body of his destiny<\/p>\n

And lead his blind will towards an unknown goal.<\/p>\n

His fate within him shapes his acts and rules;<\/p>\n

Its face and form already are born in him,<\/p>\n

Its parentage is in
\nhis secret soul;<\/p>\n

Here Matter seems to mould the body’s life<\/p>\n

And the soul follows
\nwhere its nature drives:<\/p>\n

Nature and Fate compel his free-will’s choice.<\/p>\n

But greater spirits this balance can reverse<\/p>\n

And make the soul the artist of its fate.<\/p>\n

This is the mystic truth our ignorance hides:<\/p>\n

Doom is a passage for our inborn force,<\/p>\n

Our ordeal is the hidden spirit’s choice,<\/p>\n

Ananke is our being’s own decree.<\/p>\n

All was fulfilled the heart of Savitri<\/p>\n

Flower-sweet and adamant, passionate and calm,<\/p>\n

Had chosen and on her strength’s unbending road<\/p>\n

Forced to its issue the long cosmic curve.<\/p>\n

Once more she sat behind loud hastening hooves;<\/p>\n

A speed of armoured squadrons and a voice<\/p>\n

Far-heard of chariots bore her from her home.<\/p>\n

A couchant earth wakened in its dumb muse<\/p>\n

Looked up at her from a vast indolence:<\/p>\n

Hills wallowing in a bright haze, large lands<\/p>\n

That lolled at ease beneath the summer heavens,<\/p>\n

Region on region spacious in the sun,<\/p>\n

Cities like chrysolites in the wide blaze<\/p>\n

And yellow rivers pacing, lion-maned, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 465<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

Led to the Shalwa marches’ emerald line,<\/p>\n

A happy front to iron vastnesses<\/p>\n

And austere peaks and titan solitudes.<\/p>\n

Once more was near the fair and fated place,<\/p>\n

The borders gleaming with the groves’ delight<\/p>\n

Where first she met the face of Satyavan<\/p>\n

And he saw like one waking into a dream<\/p>\n

Some timeless beauty and reality,<\/p>\n

The moon-gold sweetness of heaven’s earth-born child.<\/p>\n

The past receded and the future neared:<\/p>\n

Far now behind lay Madra’s spacious halls,<\/p>\n

The white carved pillars, the cool dim alcoves,<\/p>\n

The tinged mosaic of the crystal floors,<\/p>\n

The towered pavilions, the wind-rippled pools<\/p>\n

And gardens humming with the murmur of bees,<\/p>\n

Forgotten soon or a pale memory<\/p>\n

The fountain’s plash in the wide stone-bound pool,<\/p>\n

The thoughtful noontide’s brooding solemn trance,<\/p>\n

The colonnade’s dream grey in the quiet eve,<\/p>\n

The slow moonrise gliding in front of Night.<\/p>\n

Left far behind were now the faces known,<\/p>\n

The happy silken babble on laughter’s lips<\/p>\n

And the close-clinging clasp of intimate hands<\/p>\n

And adoration’s light in cherished eyes<\/p>\n

Offered to the one sovereign of their life.<\/p>\n

Nature’s primeval loneliness was here:<\/p>\n

Here only was the voice of bird and beast,\u2014<\/p>\n

The ascetic’s exile in the dim-souled huge<\/p>\n

Inhuman forest far from cheerful sound<\/p>\n

Of man’s blithe converse and his crowded days.<\/p>\n

In a broad eve with one red eye of cloud,<\/p>\n

Through a narrow opening, a green flowered cleft,<\/p>\n

Out of the stare of sky and soil they came<\/p>\n

Into a mighty home of emerald dusk.<\/p>\n

There onward led by a faint brooding path<\/p>\n

Which toiled through the shadow of enormous trunks<\/p>\n

And under arches misers of sunshine, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 466<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

They saw low thatched roofs of a hermitage<\/p>\n

Huddled beneath a patch of azure hue<\/p>\n

In a sunlit clearing that seemed the outbreak<\/p>\n

Of a glad smile in the forest’s monstrous heart,<\/p>\n

A rude refuge of the thought and will of man<\/p>\n

Watched by the crowding giants of the wood.<\/p>\n

Arrived in that rough-hewn homestead they gave,<\/p>\n

Questioning no more the strangeness of her fate,<\/p>\n

Their pride and loved one to the great blind king,<\/p>\n

A regal pillar of fallen mightiness<\/p>\n

And the stately care-worn woman once a queen<\/p>\n

Who now hoped nothing for herself from life,<\/p>\n

But all things only hoped for her one child,<\/p>\n

Calling on that single head from partial Fate<\/p>\n

All joy of earth, all heaven’s beatitude.<\/p>\n

Adoring wisdom and beauty like a young god’s,<\/p>\n

She saw him loved by heaven as by herself,<\/p>\n

She rejoiced in his brightness and believed in his fate<\/p>\n

And knew not of the evil drawing near.<\/p>\n

Lingering some days upon the forest verge<\/p>\n

Like men who lengthen out departure’s pain,<\/p>\n

Unwilling to separate sorrowful clinging hands,<\/p>\n

Unwilling to see for the last time a face,<\/p>\n

Heavy with the sorrow of a coming day<\/p>\n

And wondering at the carelessness of Fate<\/p>\n

Who breaks with idle hands her supreme works,<\/p>\n

They parted from her with pain-fraught burdened hearts; 1<\/sup>\n<\/p>\n

Driven by the singularity of her fate,<\/p>\n

Helpless against the choice of Savitri’s heart<\/p>\n

They left her to her rapture and her doom<\/p>\n

In the tremendous forest’s savage charge.<\/p>\n

All put behind her that was once her life,<\/p>\n

All welcomed that henceforth was his and hers,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1<\/span><\/sup> What is apparently an alternative version of the comparison found in
\nthe six preceding lines follows this line thus:<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

As
\nforced by inescapable fate we part<\/span><\/p>\n

From
\none whom we shall never see again;<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 467<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

She abode with Satyavan in the wild woods:<\/p>\n

Priceless she deemed her joy so close to death;<\/p>\n

Apart with love she lived for love alone.<\/p>\n

As if self-poised above the march of days,<\/p>\n

Her immobile spirit watched the haste of Time,<\/p>\n

A statue of passion and invincible force,<\/p>\n

An absolutism of sweet imperious will,<\/p>\n

A tranquillity and a violence of the gods<\/p>\n

Indomitable and immutable.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At first to her beneath the sapphire heavens<\/p>\n

The sylvan solitude was a gorgeous dream,<\/p>\n

An altar of the summer’s splendour and fire,<\/p>\n

A sky-topped flower-hung palace of the gods<\/p>\n

And all its scenes a smile on rapture’s lips<\/p>\n

And all its voices bards of happiness.<\/p>\n

There was a chanting in the casual wind,<\/p>\n

There was a glory in the least sunbeam;<\/p>\n

Night was a chrysoprase on velvet cloth,<\/p>\n

A nestling darkness or a moonlit deep;<\/p>\n

Day was a purple pageant and a hymn,<\/p>\n

A wave of the laughter of light from morn to eve.<\/p>\n

His absence was a dream of memory,<\/p>\n

His presence was the empire of a god.<\/p>\n

A fusing of the joys of earth and heaven,<\/p>\n

A tremulous blaze of nuptial rapture passed,<\/p>\n

A rushing of two spirits to be one,<\/p>\n

A burning of two bodies in one flame.<\/p>\n

Opened were gates of unforgettable bliss:<\/p>\n

Two lives were locked within an earthly heaven<\/p>\n

And fate and grief fled from that fiery hour.<\/p>\n

But soon now failed the summer’s ardent breath<\/p>\n

And throngs of blue-black clouds crept through the sky<\/p>\n

And rain fled sobbing over the dripping leaves<\/p>\n

And storm became the forest’s titan voice.<\/p>\n

Then listening to the thunder’s fatal crash <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 468<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

And the fugitive pattering footsteps of the showers<\/p>\n

And the long unsatisfied panting of the wind<\/p>\n

And sorrow muttering in the sound-vexed night,<\/p>\n

The grief of all the
\nworld came near to her:<\/p>\n

Night’s darkness seemed her future’s ominous face.<\/p>\n

The shadow of her lover’s doom arose<\/p>\n

And fear laid hands upon her mortal heart.<\/p>\n

The moments swift and ruthless raced; alarmed<\/p>\n

Her thoughts, her mind remembered Narad’s date.<\/p>\n

A trembling moved accountant of her riches,<\/p>\n

She reckoned the insufficient days between:<\/p>\n

A dire expectancy knocked at her breast;<\/p>\n

Dreadful to her were the footsteps of the hours:<\/p>\n

Grief came, a passionate stranger to her gate:<\/p>\n

Banished when in his arms, out of her sleep<\/p>\n

It rose at morn to look into her face.<\/p>\n

Vainly she fled into abysms of bliss<\/p>\n

From her pursuing foresight of the end.<\/p>\n

The more she plunged into love that anguish grew;<\/p>\n

Her deepest grief from sweetest gulfs arose.<\/p>\n

Remembrance was a poignant pang, she felt<\/p>\n

Each day a golden leaf torn cruelly out<\/p>\n

From her too slender book of love and joy.<\/p>\n

Thus swaying in strong gusts of happiness,<\/p>\n

And swimming in foreboding’s sombre waves,<\/p>\n

And feeding sorrow and terror with her heart,\u2014<\/p>\n

For now they sat among her bosom’s guests<\/p>\n

Or in her inner chamber paced apart,\u2014<\/p>\n

Her eyes stared blind into the future’s night.<\/p>\n

Out of her separate self she looked and saw,<\/p>\n

Moving amid the unconscious faces loved,<\/p>\n

In mind a stranger though in heart so near,<\/p>\n

The ignorant smiling world go happily by<\/p>\n

Upon its way towards an unknown doom<\/p>\n

And wondered at the careless lives of men.<\/p>\n

As if in different worlds they walked, though close, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 469<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

They confident of the returning sun,<\/p>\n

They wrapped in little hourly hopes and tasks,\u2014<\/p>\n

She in her dreadful knowledge was alone.<\/p>\n

The rich and happy secrecy that once<\/p>\n

Enshrined her as if in a silver bower<\/p>\n

Apart in a bright nest of thoughts and dreams<\/p>\n

Made room for tragic hours of solitude<\/p>\n

And lonely grief that none could share or know,<\/p>\n

A body seeing the end too soon of joy<\/p>\n

And the fragile happiness of its mortal love.<\/p>\n

Her quiet visage still and sweet and calm,<\/p>\n

Her graceful daily acts were now a mask;<\/p>\n

In vain she looked upon her depths to find<\/p>\n

A ground of stillness and the spirit’s peace.<\/p>\n

Still veiled from her was the silent Being within<\/p>\n

Who sees life’s drama pass with unmoved eyes,<\/p>\n

Supports the sorrow of the mind and heart<\/p>\n

And bears in human breasts the world and fate.<\/p>\n

A glimpse or flashes came, the Presence was hid.<\/p>\n

Only her violent heart and passionate will<\/p>\n

Were pushed in front to meet the immutable doom;<\/p>\n

Defenceless, nude, bound to her human lot<\/p>\n

They had no means to act, no way to save.<\/p>\n

These she controlled, nothing was shown outside:<\/p>\n

She was still to them the child they knew and loved;<\/p>\n

The sorrowing woman
\nthey saw not within;<\/p>\n

No change was in her beautiful motions seen:<\/p>\n

A worshipped empress all once vied to serve,<\/p>\n

She made herself the diligent serf of all,<\/p>\n

Nor spared the labour of broom and jar and well,<\/p>\n

Or close gentle tending or to heap the fire<\/p>\n

Of altar and kitchen, no slight task allowed<\/p>\n

To others that her woman’s strength might do.<\/p>\n

In all her acts a strange divinity shone:<\/p>\n

Into a simplest movement she could bring<\/p>\n

A oneness with earth’s glowing robe of light,<\/p>\n

A lifting up of common acts by love. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 470<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

All-love was hers and its one heavenly cord<\/p>\n

Bound all to all with her as golden tie.<\/p>\n

But when her grief to the surface pressed too close,<\/p>\n

These things, once gracious adjuncts of her joy,<\/p>\n

Seemed meaningless to her, a gleaming shell,<\/p>\n

Or were a round mechanical and void,<\/p>\n

Her body’s actions shared not by her will.<\/p>\n

Always behind this strange divided life<\/p>\n

Her spirit like a sea of living fire<\/p>\n

Possessed her lover and to his body clung,<\/p>\n

One locked embrace to guard its threatened mate.<\/p>\n

All night she woke through the slow silent hours<\/p>\n

Brooding on the treasure of his bosom and face,<\/p>\n

Hung o’er the sleep-bound beauty of his brow<\/p>\n

Or laid her burning cheek upon his feet.<\/p>\n

Waking at morn her lips endlessly clung to his,<\/p>\n

Unwilling ever to separate again<\/p>\n

Or lose that honeyed drain of lingering joy,<\/p>\n

Unwilling to loose his body from her breast,<\/p>\n

The warm inadequate signs that love must use.<\/p>\n

Intolerant of the poverty of Time<\/p>\n

Her passion catching at the fugitive hours<\/p>\n

Willed the expense of centuries in one day<\/p>\n

Of prodigal love and the surf of ecstasy;<\/p>\n

Or else she strove even in mortal time<\/p>\n

To build a little room for timelessness<\/p>\n

By the deep union of two human lives,<\/p>\n

Her soul secluded shut into his soul.<\/p>\n

After all was given she demanded still;<\/p>\n

Even by his strong embrace unsatisfied,<\/p>\n

She longed to cry, \u201cO tender Satyavan,<\/p>\n

O lover of my soul, give more, give more<\/p>\n

Of love while yet thou canst, to her thou lov’st.<\/p>\n

Imprint thyself for every nerve to keep<\/p>\n

That thrills to thee the message of my heart.<\/p>\n

For soon we part and who shall know how long<\/p>\n

Before the great wheel in its monstrous round <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 471<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

Restore us to each other and our love?\u201d<\/p>\n

Too well she loved to speak a fateful word<\/p>\n

And lay her burden on his happy head;<\/p>\n

She pressed the outsurging grief back into her breast<\/p>\n

To dwell within silent, unhelped, alone.<\/p>\n

But Satyavan sometimes half understood,<\/p>\n

Or felt at least with the uncertain answer<\/p>\n

Of our thought-blinded hearts the unuttered need,<\/p>\n

The unplumbed abyss of her deep passionate want.<\/p>\n

All of his speeding days that he could spare<\/p>\n

From labour in the forest hewing wood<\/p>\n

And hunting food in the wild sylvan glades<\/p>\n

And service to his father’s sightless life<\/p>\n

He gave to her and helped to increase the hours<\/p>\n

By the nearness of his presence and his clasp,<\/p>\n

And lavish softness of heart-seeking words<\/p>\n

And the close beating felt of heart on heart.<\/p>\n

All was too little for her bottomless need.<\/p>\n

If in his presence she forgot awhile,<\/p>\n

Grief filled his
\nabsence with its aching touch,<\/p>\n

She saw the desert of her coming days<\/p>\n

Imaged in every solitary hour.<\/p>\n

Although with a vain imaginary bliss<\/p>\n

Of fiery union through death’s door of escape<\/p>\n

She dreamed of her body robed in funeral flame,<\/p>\n

She knew she must not clutch that happiness<\/p>\n

To die with him and follow, seizing his robe<\/p>\n

Across our other countries, travellers glad<\/p>\n

Into the sweet or terrible Beyond.<\/p>\n

For those sad parents still would need her here<\/p>\n

To help the empty remnant of their day.<\/p>\n

Often it seemed to her the ages’ pain<\/p>\n

Had pressed their
\nquintessence into her single woe<\/p>\n

Concentrating in her a tortured world.<\/p>\n

Thus in the silent chamber of her soul<\/p>\n

Cloistering her love to live with secret grief<\/p>\n

She dwelt like a dumb priest with hidden gods <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 472<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

Unappeased by the wordless offering of her days,<\/p>\n

Lifting to them her sorrow like frankincense,<\/p>\n

Her life the altar, herself the sacrifice.<\/p>\n

Yet ever they grew into each other more<\/p>\n

Until it seemed no power could rend apart,<\/p>\n

Since even the body’s walls could not divide.<\/p>\n

For when he wandered in the forest, oft<\/p>\n

Her conscious spirit walked with him and knew<\/p>\n

His actions as if in herself he moved;<\/p>\n

He, less aware, thrilled with her from afar.<\/p>\n

Always the stature of her passion grew;<\/p>\n

Grief, fear became the food of mighty love.<\/p>\n

Increased by its
\ntorment it filled the whole world,<\/p>\n

It was all her life,
\nbecame her whole earth and heaven.<\/p>\n

Although life-born, an infant of the hours,<\/p>\n

Immortal it walked unslayable as the gods:<\/p>\n

Her spirit stretched
\nmeasureless in strength divine<\/p>\n

An anvil for the blows of Fate and Time:<\/p>\n

Or tired of sorrow’s passionate luxury,<\/p>\n

Grief’s self became
\ncalm, dull-eyed, resolute<\/p>\n

Awaiting some issue of its fiery struggle,<\/p>\n

Some deed in which it might for ever cease,<\/p>\n

Victorious over itself and death and tears.<\/p>\n

The year now paused upon the brink of change.<\/p>\n

No more the storms sailed with stupendous wings<\/p>\n

And thunder strode in wrath across the world,<\/p>\n

But still was heard a muttering in the sky<\/p>\n

And rain dripped wearily through the mournful air<\/p>\n

And grey slow-drifting clouds shut in the earth.<\/p>\n

So her grief’s heavy sky shut in her heart.<\/p>\n

A still self hid behind but gave no light:<\/p>\n

No voice came down from the forgotten heights;<\/p>\n

Only in the privacy of its brooding pain<\/p>\n

Her human heart spoke to the body’s fate.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

End of Canto One <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 473<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Book Seven The Book of Yoga   Canto One    The Joy of Union; The Ordeal of the Foreknowledge of Death and the Heart’s Grief…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-29-savitri-volume-29","wpcat-22-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}