{"id":1026,"date":"2013-07-13T01:32:06","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1026"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:32:06","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:06","slug":"23-book-10-canto-03-the-debate-of-love-and-death-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\/23-book-10-canto-03-the-debate-of-love-and-death-vol-29-savitri-volume-29","title":{"rendered":"-23_Book 10 Canto 03 The Debate of Love and Death.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
 <\/td>\n\n
\n

Canto Three<\/i> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe Debate of
\nLove and Death<\/font><\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A sad destroying cadence the voice sank;<\/p>\n

It seemed to lead the advancing march of Life<\/p>\n

Into some still original Inane.<\/p>\n

But Savitri answered to almighty Death:<\/p>\n

\u201cO dark-browed sophist of the universe<\/p>\n

Who veilst the Real with its own Idea,<\/p>\n

Hiding with brute objects Nature’s living face,<\/p>\n

Masking eternity with thy dance of death,<\/p>\n

Thou hast woven the ignorant
\nMind into a screen<\/p>\n

And made of Thought error’s purveyor and scribe,<\/p>\n

And a false witness of mind’s servant sense.<\/p>\n

An aesthete of the sorrow of the world,<\/p>\n

Champion of a harsh and sad philosophy<\/p>\n

Thou hast used words to shutter out the Light<\/p>\n

And called in Truth to vindicate a lie.<\/p>\n

A lying reality is falsehood’s crown<\/p>\n

And a perverted truth her richest gem.<\/p>\n

O Death, thou speakest
\nTruth but Truth that slays,<\/p>\n

I answer to thee with the Truth that saves.<\/p>\n

A traveller new-discovering himself,<\/p>\n

One made of Matter’s world his starting-point,<\/p>\n

He made of Nothingness his living-room<\/p>\n

And Night a process of the eternal light<\/p>\n

And death a spur towards immortality.<\/p>\n

God wrapped his head from sight in Matter’s cowl,<\/p>\n

His consciousness dived into inconscient depths,<\/p>\n

All-knowledge seemed a huge dark Nescience;<\/p>\n

Infinity wore a boundless zero’s form.<\/p>\n

His abysms of bliss became insensible deeps,<\/p>\n

Eternity a blank spiritual Vast.<\/p>\n

Annulling an original nullity, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 621<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

The Timeless took its ground in emptiness<\/p>\n

And drew the figure of a universe,<\/p>\n

That the spirit might adventure into Time<\/p>\n

And wrestle with adamant Necessity<\/p>\n

And the soul pursue a cosmic pilgrimage.<\/p>\n

A spirit moved in black immensities<\/p>\n

And built a Thought in ancient Nothingness;<\/p>\n

A soul in God’s tremendous Void
\nwas lit,<\/p>\n

A secret labouring glow of nascent fire.<\/p>\n

In Nihil’s gulf his mighty Puissance wrought;<\/p>\n

She swung her formless motion into shapes,<\/p>\n

Made Matter the body of the Bodiless.<\/p>\n

Infant and dim the eternal Mights awoke.<\/p>\n

In inert Matter breathed a slumbering Life,<\/p>\n

In a subconscient Life Mind lay asleep;<\/p>\n

In waking Life it stretched its giant limbs<\/p>\n

To shake from it the torpor of its drowse;<\/p>\n

A senseless substance quivered into sense,<\/p>\n

The world’s heart
\ncommenced to beat, its eyes to see.<\/p>\n

In the crowded dumb vibrations of a brain<\/p>\n

Thought fumbled in a ring to find itself,<\/p>\n

Discovered speech and fed the new-born Word<\/p>\n

That bridged with spans of light the world’s ignorance.<\/p>\n

In waking Mind the Thinker built his house.<\/p>\n

A reasoning animal willed and planned and sought;<\/p>\n

He stood erect among his brute compeers,<\/p>\n

He built life new, measured the universe,<\/p>\n

Opposed his fate and wrestled with unseen Powers,<\/p>\n

Conquered and used the laws that rule the world,<\/p>\n

And hoped to ride the heavens and reach the stars,<\/p>\n

A master of his huge environment.<\/p>\n

Now through Mind’s windows stares the demi-god<\/p>\n

Hidden behind the curtains of man’s soul:<\/p>\n

He has seen the Unknown, looked on Truth’s veilless face;<\/p>\n

A ray has touched him from the eternal
\nSun;<\/p>\n

Motionless, voiceless in foreseeing depths, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 622<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

He stands awake in Supernature’s light<\/p>\n

And sees a glory of arisen wings<\/p>\n

And sees the vast descending might of God.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

O Death, thou lookst on an unfinished world<\/p>\n

Assailed by thee and of its road unsure,<\/p>\n

Peopled by imperfect minds and ignorant lives,<\/p>\n

And sayest God is not and all is vain.<\/p>\n

How shall the child already be the man?<\/p>\n

Because he is infant, shall he never grow?<\/p>\n

Because he is ignorant, shall he never learn?<\/p>\n

In a small fragile seed a great tree lurks,<\/p>\n

In a tiny gene a thinking being is shut;<\/p>\n

A little element in a little sperm,<\/p>\n

It grows and is a conqueror and a sage.<\/p>\n

Then wilt thou spew out, Death, God’s mystic truth,<\/p>\n

Deny the occult spiritual miracle?<\/p>\n

Still wilt thou say there is no spirit, no God?<\/p>\n

A mute material Nature wakes and sees;<\/p>\n

She has invented speech, unveiled a will.<\/p>\n

Something there waits beyond towards which she strives,<\/p>\n

Something surrounds her into which she grows:<\/p>\n

To uncover the spirit, to change back into God,<\/p>\n

To exceed herself is her transcendent task.<\/p>\n

In God concealed the world began to be,<\/p>\n

Tardily it travels towards manifest God:<\/p>\n

Our imperfection towards perfection toils,<\/p>\n

The body is the chrysalis of a soul:<\/p>\n

The infinite holds the finite in its arms,<\/p>\n

Time travels towards revealed eternity.<\/p>\n

A miracle structure of the eternal Mage,<\/p>\n

Matter its mystery hides from its own eyes,<\/p>\n

A scripture written out in cryptic signs,<\/p>\n

An occult document of the All-Wonderful’s art.<\/p>\n

All here bears witness to his secret might,<\/p>\n

In all we feel his presence and his power. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 623<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

A blaze of his sovereign glory is the sun,<\/p>\n

A glory is the gold
\nand glimmering moon.<\/p>\n

A glory is his dream of purple sky.<\/p>\n

A march of his greatness are the wheeling stars.<\/p>\n

His laughter of beauty breaks out in green trees,<\/p>\n

His moments of beauty triumph in a flower;<\/p>\n

The blue sea’s chant, the rivulet’s wandering voice<\/p>\n

Are murmurs falling from the Eternal’s harp.<\/p>\n

This world is God fulfilled in outwardness.<\/p>\n

His ways challenge our reason and our sense;<\/p>\n

By blind brute movements of an ignorant Force,<\/p>\n

By means we slight as
\nsmall, obscure or base<\/p>\n

A greatness founded upon little things,<\/p>\n

He has built a world in the unknowing Void.<\/p>\n

His forms he has massed from infinitesimal dust;<\/p>\n

His marvels are built from insignificant things.<\/p>\n

If mind is crippled, life untaught and crude,<\/p>\n

If brutal masks are there and evil acts,<\/p>\n

They are incidents of his vast and varied plot,<\/p>\n

His great and dangerous drama’s needed steps;<\/p>\n

He makes with these and all his passion-play,<\/p>\n

A play and yet no play but the deep scheme<\/p>\n

Of a transcendent Wisdom finding ways<\/p>\n

To meet her Lord in the shadow and the Night:<\/p>\n

Above her is the vigil of the stars;<\/p>\n

Watched by a solitary Infinitude<\/p>\n

She embodies in dumb Matter the Divine,<\/p>\n

In symbol minds and lives the Absolute.<\/p>\n

A miracle-monger her mechanical craft;<\/p>\n

Matter’s machine worked out the laws of thought,<\/p>\n

Life’s engines served the labour of a soul:<\/p>\n

The mighty Mother her creation wrought,<\/p>\n

A huge caprice self-bound by iron laws,<\/p>\n

And shut God into an enigmatic world:<\/p>\n

She lulled the Omniscient into nescient sleep,<\/p>\n

Omnipotence on Inertia’s back she drove, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 624<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Trod perfectly with divine unconscious steps<\/p>\n

The enormous circle of her wonder-works.<\/p>\n

Immortality assured itself by death;<\/p>\n

The Eternal’s face was seen through drifts of Time.<\/p>\n

His knowledge he disguised as Ignorance,<\/p>\n

His Good he sowed in Evil’s monstrous bed,<\/p>\n

Made error a door by which Truth could enter in,<\/p>\n

His plant of bliss watered with Sorrow’s tears.<\/p>\n

A thousand aspects point back to the One;<\/p>\n

A dual Nature covered the Unique.<\/p>\n

In this meeting of the Eternal’s mingling masques,<\/p>\n

This tangle-dance of passionate contraries<\/p>\n

Locking like lovers in a forbidden embrace<\/p>\n

The quarrel of their lost identity,<\/p>\n

In this wrestle and wrangle of the extremes of Power<\/p>\n

Earth’s million roads struggled towards deity.<\/p>\n

All stumbled on behind a stumbling Guide,<\/p>\n

Yet every stumble is a needed pace<\/p>\n

On unknown routes to an unknowable goal.<\/p>\n

All blundered and straggled towards the
\none Divine.<\/p>\n

As if transmuted by a titan spell<\/p>\n

The eternal powers assumed a dubious face:<\/p>\n

Idols of an oblique divinity,<\/p>\n

They wore the heads of animal or troll,<\/p>\n

Assumed ears of the fawn, the satyr’s hoof,<\/p>\n

Or harboured the
\ndemoniac in their gaze.<\/p>\n

A crooked maze they made of thinking mind,<\/p>\n

They suffered a metamorphosis of the heart,<\/p>\n

Admitting Bacchant revellers from the Night<\/p>\n

Into its sanctuary of delights,<\/p>\n

As in a Dionysian masquerade.<\/p>\n

On the highways, in the gardens of the world<\/p>\n

They wallowed oblivious of their divine parts,<\/p>\n

As drunkards of a dire Circean wine<\/p>\n

Or a child who sprawls and sports in Nature’s mire.<\/p>\n

Even wisdom, hewer of the roads of God, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 625<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Is a partner in the deep disastrous game:<\/p>\n

Lost is the pilgrim’s wallet and the scrip,<\/p>\n

She fails to read the map and watch the star.<\/p>\n

A poor self-righteous virtue is her stock<\/p>\n

And reason’s pragmatic grope or abstract sight,<\/p>\n

Or the technique of a brief hour’s success<\/p>\n

She teaches, an usher in utility’s school.<\/p>\n

On the ocean surface of vast Consciousness<\/p>\n

Small thoughts in shoals are fished up into a net<\/p>\n

But the great truths escape her narrow cast;<\/p>\n

Guarded from vision by creation’s depths,<\/p>\n

Obscure they swim in blind enormous gulfs<\/p>\n

Safe from the little sounding leads of mind,<\/p>\n

Too far for the puny diver’s shallow plunge.<\/p>\n

Our mortal vision peers with ignorant eyes;<\/p>\n

It has no gaze on the deep heart of things.<\/p>\n

Our Knowledge walks leaning on Error’s staff,<\/p>\n

A worshipper of false dogmas and false gods,<\/p>\n

Or fanatic of a fierce intolerant creed<\/p>\n

Or a seeker doubting every truth he finds,<\/p>\n

A sceptic facing Light with adamant No<\/p>\n

Or chilling the heart with dry ironic smile,<\/p>\n

A cynic stamping out the god in man;<\/p>\n

A darkness wallows in the paths of Time<\/p>\n

Or lifts its giant head to blot the stars;<\/p>\n

It makes a cloud of the interpreting mind<\/p>\n

And intercepts the oracles of the Sun.<\/p>\n

Yet Light is there; it stands at Nature’s doors:<\/p>\n

It holds a torch to lead the traveller in.<\/p>\n

It waits to be kindled in our secret cells;<\/p>\n

It is a star lighting an ignorant sea,<\/p>\n

A lamp upon our poop piercing the night.<\/p>\n

As knowledge grows Light flames up from within:<\/p>\n

It is a shining warrior in the mind,<\/p>\n

An eagle of dreams in the divining heart,<\/p>\n

An armour in the fight, a bow of God. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 626<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Then larger dawns arrive and Wisdom’s pomps<\/p>\n

Cross through the being’s dim half-lighted fields;<\/p>\n

Philosophy climbs up Thought’s cloud-bank peaks<\/p>\n

And Science tears out Nature’s occult powers,<\/p>\n

Enormous jinns who serve a dwarf’s small needs,<\/p>\n

Exposes the sealed minutiae of her art<\/p>\n

And conquers her by her own captive force.<\/p>\n

On heights unreached by mind’s most daring soar,<\/p>\n

Upon a dangerous edge of failing Time<\/p>\n

The soul draws back into its deathless Self;<\/p>\n

Man’s knowledge becomes God’s supernal Ray.<\/p>\n

There is the mystic realm whence leaps the power<\/p>\n

Whose fire burns in the eyes of seer and sage;<\/p>\n

A lightning flash of visionary sight,<\/p>\n

It plays upon an inward verge of mind:<\/p>\n

Thought silenced gazes into a brilliant Void.<\/p>\n

A voice comes down from mystic unseen peaks:<\/p>\n

A cry of splendour from a mouth of storm,<\/p>\n

It is the voice that speaks to night’s profound,<\/p>\n

It is the thunder and the flaming call.<\/p>\n

Above the planes that climb from nescient earth,<\/p>\n

A hand is lifted towards the Invisible’s
\nrealm<\/p>\n

Beyond the superconscient’s blinding line<\/p>\n

And plucks away the screens of the Unknown;<\/p>\n

A spirit within looks into the Eternal’s eyes.<\/p>\n

It hears the Word to which our hearts were deaf,<\/p>\n

It sees through the blaze in which our thoughts grew blind;<\/p>\n

It drinks from the naked breasts of glorious Truth,<\/p>\n

It learns the secrets of eternity.<\/p>\n

Thus all was plunged into the riddling Night,<\/p>\n

Thus all is raised to meet a dazzling Sun.<\/p>\n

O Death, this is the mystery of thy reign.<\/p>\n

In earth’s anomalous and
\ntragic field<\/p>\n

Carried in its aimless journey by the sun<\/p>\n

Mid the forced marches of the great dumb stars,<\/p>\n

A darkness occupied the fields of God, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 627<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

And Matter’s world was governed by thy shape.<\/p>\n

Thy mask has covered the Eternal’s face,<\/p>\n

The Bliss that made the world has fallen asleep.<\/p>\n

Abandoned in the Vast she slumbered on:<\/p>\n

An evil transmutation overtook<\/p>\n

Her members till she knew herself no more.<\/p>\n

Only through her creative slumber flit<\/p>\n

Frail memories of the joy and beauty meant<\/p>\n

Under the sky’s blue laugh mid green-scarfed trees<\/p>\n

And happy squanderings of scents and hues,<\/p>\n

In the field of the golden promenade of the sun<\/p>\n

And the vigil of the dream-light of the stars,<\/p>\n

Amid high meditating heads of hills,<\/p>\n

On the bosom of voluptuous rain-kissed earth<\/p>\n

And by the sapphire tumblings of the sea.<\/p>\n

But now the primal innocence is lost<\/p>\n

And Death and Ignorance govern the mortal world<\/p>\n

And Nature’s visage wears a greyer hue.<\/p>\n

Earth still has kept her early charm and grace,<\/p>\n

The grandeur and the beauty still are hers,<\/p>\n

But veiled is the divine Inhabitant.<\/p>\n

The souls of men have wandered from the Light<\/p>\n

And the great Mother turns away her face.<\/p>\n

The eyes of the creatrix Bliss are closed<\/p>\n

And sorrow’s touch has found her in her dreams.<\/p>\n

As she turns and tosses on her bed of Void,<\/p>\n

Because she cannot wake and find herself<\/p>\n

And cannot build again her perfect shape,<\/p>\n

Oblivious of her nature and her state,<\/p>\n

Forgetting her instinct of felicity,<\/p>\n

Forgetting to create a world of joy,<\/p>\n

She weeps and makes her creatures’ eyes to weep;<\/p>\n

Testing with sorrow’s edge her children’s breasts,<\/p>\n

She spends on life’s vain waste of hope and toil<\/p>\n

The poignant luxury of grief and tears.<\/p>\n

In the nightmare change of her half-conscious dream, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 628<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Tortured herself and torturing by her touch,<\/p>\n

She comes to our hearts and bodies and our lives<\/p>\n

Wearing a hard and cruel mask of pain.<\/p>\n

Our nature twisted by the abortive birth<\/p>\n

Returns wry answers to life’s questioning shocks,<\/p>\n

An acrid relish finds in the world’s pangs,<\/p>\n

Drinks the sharp wine of grief’s perversity.<\/p>\n

A curse is laid on the pure joy of life:<\/p>\n

Delight, God’s sweetest sign and Beauty’s twin,<\/p>\n

Dreaded by aspiring saint and austere sage,<\/p>\n

Is shunned, a dangerous and ambiguous cheat,<\/p>\n

A specious trick of an infernal Power<\/p>\n

It tempts the soul to its self-hurt and fall.<\/p>\n

A puritan God made pleasure a poisonous fruit,<\/p>\n

Or red drug in the market-place of Death,<\/p>\n

And sin the child of Nature’s ecstasy.<\/p>\n

Yet every creature hunts for happiness,<\/p>\n

Buys with harsh pangs or tears by violence<\/p>\n

From the dull breast of the inanimate globe<\/p>\n

Some fragment or some broken shard of bliss.<\/p>\n

Even joy itself
\nbecomes a poisonous draught,<\/p>\n

Its hunger is made a dreadful hook of Fate.<\/p>\n

All means are held good to catch a single beam,<\/p>\n

Eternity sacrificed for a moment’s bliss:<\/p>\n

Yet for joy and not for sorrow earth was made<\/p>\n

And not as a dream in endless suffering Time.<\/p>\n

Although God made the world for his delight,<\/p>\n

An ignorant Power took charge and seemed his Will<\/p>\n

And Death’s deep falsity has mastered Life.<\/p>\n

All grew a play of Chance simulating Fate.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A secret air of pure felicity<\/p>\n

Deep like a sapphire heaven our spirits breathe;<\/p>\n

Our hearts and bodies feel its obscure call,<\/p>\n

Our senses grope for it and touch and lose.<\/p>\n

If this withdrew, the world would sink in the Void; <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 629<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

If this were not, nothing could move or live.<\/p>\n

A hidden Bliss is at the root of things.<\/p>\n

A mute Delight regards Time’s countless works:<\/p>\n

To house God’s joy in things Space gave wide room,<\/p>\n

To house God’s joy in self our souls were born.<\/p>\n

This universe an old enchantment guards;<\/p>\n

Its objects are carved cups of World-Delight<\/p>\n

Whose charmed wine is some deep soul’s rapture-drink:<\/p>\n

The All-Wonderful has packed heaven with his dreams,<\/p>\n

He has made blank ancient Space his marvel-house;<\/p>\n

He spilled his spirit into Matter’s signs:<\/p>\n

His fires of grandeur burn in the great sun,<\/p>\n

He glides through heaven shimmering in the moon;<\/p>\n

He is beauty carolling in the fields of sound;<\/p>\n

He chants the stanzas of the odes of Wind;<\/p>\n

He is silence watching in the stars at night;<\/p>\n

He wakes at dawn and calls from every bough,<\/p>\n

Lies stunned in the stone and dreams in flower and tree.<\/p>\n

Even in this labour and dolour of Ignorance,<\/p>\n

On the hard perilous ground of difficult earth,<\/p>\n

In spite of death and evil circumstance<\/p>\n

A will to live persists, a joy to be.<\/p>\n

There is a joy in all that meets the sense,<\/p>\n

A joy in all experience of the soul,<\/p>\n

A joy in evil and a joy in good,<\/p>\n

A joy in virtue and a joy in sin:<\/p>\n

Indifferent to the threat of
\nkarmic law,<\/p>\n

Joy dares to grow upon forbidden soil,<\/p>\n

Its sap runs through the plant and flowers of Pain:<\/p>\n

It thrills with the drama of fate and tragic doom,<\/p>\n

It tears its food from sorrow and ecstasy,<\/p>\n

On danger and difficulty whets its strength;<\/p>\n

It wallows with the reptile and the worm<\/p>\n

And lifts its head, an equal of the stars;<\/p>\n

It shares the fairies’ dance, dines with the gnome:<\/p>\n

It basks in the light and heat of many suns, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 630<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

The sun of Beauty and the sun of Power<\/p>\n

Flatter and foster it with golden beams;<\/p>\n

It grows towards the Titan and the God.<\/p>\n

On earth it lingers drinking its deep fill,<\/p>\n

Through the symbol of her pleasure and her pain,<\/p>\n

Of the grapes of Heaven and the flowers of the Abyss,<\/p>\n

Of the flame-stabs and the torment-craft of Hell<\/p>\n

And dim fragments of the glory of Paradise.<\/p>\n

In the small paltry pleasures of man’s life,<\/p>\n

In his petty passions and joys it finds a taste,<\/p>\n

A taste in tears and torture of broken hearts,<\/p>\n

In the crown of gold and in the crown of thorns,<\/p>\n

In life’s nectar of sweetness and its bitter wine.<\/p>\n

All being it explores for unknown bliss,<\/p>\n

Sounds all experience for things new and strange.<\/p>\n

Life brings into the earthly creature’s days<\/p>\n

A tongue of glory from a
\nhigher sphere:<\/p>\n

It deepens in his musings and his Art,<\/p>\n

It leaps at the splendour of some perfect word,<\/p>\n

It exults in his high resolves and noble deeds,<\/p>\n

Wanders in his errors, dares the abyss’s brink,<\/p>\n

It climbs in his climbings, wallows in his fall.<\/p>\n

Angel and demon brides his chamber share,<\/p>\n

Possessors or competitors for life’s heart.<\/p>\n

To the enjoyer of the cosmic scene<\/p>\n

His greatness and his littleness equal are,<\/p>\n

His magnanimity and meanness hues<\/p>\n

Cast on some neutral background of the gods:<\/p>\n

The Artist’s skill he admires who
\nmade the plan,<\/p>\n

But not for ever endures this danger game:<\/p>\n

Beyond the earth, but meant for delivered earth,<\/p>\n

Wisdom and joy
\nprepare their perfect crown:<\/p>\n

Truth superhuman calls to thinking man.<\/p>\n

At last the soul turns to eternal things,<\/p>\n

In every shrine it cries for the clasp of God.<\/p>\n

Then is there played the crowning Mystery, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 631<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Then is achieved the longed-for miracle.<\/p>\n

Immortal bliss her wide celestial eyes<\/p>\n

Opens on the stars, she stirs her mighty limbs;<\/p>\n

Time thrills to the sapphics of her amour song<\/p>\n

And Space fills with a white beatitude.<\/p>\n

Then leaving to its grief the human heart,<\/p>\n

Abandoning speech and the name-determined realms,<\/p>\n

Through a gleaming far-seen sky of wordless thought,<\/p>\n

Through naked thought-free heavens of absolute sight,<\/p>\n

She climbs to the summits where the unborn Idea<\/p>\n

Remembering the future that must be<\/p>\n

Looks down upon the works of labouring Force,<\/p>\n

Immutable above the world it made.<\/p>\n

In the vast golden laughter of Truth’s sun<\/p>\n

Like a great heaven-bird on a motionless sea<\/p>\n

Is poised her winged ardour of creative joy<\/p>\n

On the still deep of the Eternal’s peace.<\/p>\n

This was the aim, this the supernal Law,<\/p>\n

Nature’s allotted task when beauty-drenched<\/p>\n

In dim mist waters of inconscient sleep,<\/p>\n

Out of the Void this grand creation rose,\u2014<\/p>\n

For this the Spirit came into the Abyss<\/p>\n

And charged with its power Matter’s unknowing
\nForce,<\/p>\n

In Night’s bare session to cathedral
\nlight,<\/p>\n

In Death’s realm repatriate immortality.<\/p>\n

A mystic slow transfiguration works.<\/p>\n

All our earth starts from mud and ends in sky,<\/p>\n

And Love that was once an animal’s desire,<\/p>\n

Then a sweet madness in the rapturous heart,<\/p>\n

An ardent comradeship in the happy mind,<\/p>\n

Becomes a wide spiritual yearning’s space.<\/p>\n

A lonely soul passions for the Alone,<\/p>\n

The heart that loved man thrills to the love of God,<\/p>\n

A body is his chamber and his shrine.<\/p>\n

Then is our being rescued from separateness;<\/p>\n

All is itself, all is new-felt in God: <\/p>\n

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\n

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A Lover leaning from his cloister’s door<\/p>\n

Gathers the whole world into his single breast.<\/p>\n

Then shall the business fail of Night and Death:<\/p>\n

When unity is won, when strife is lost<\/p>\n

And all is known and all is clasped by Love<\/p>\n

Who would turn back to ignorance and pain?<\/p>\n

O Death, I have triumphed over thee within;<\/p>\n

I quiver no more with the assault of grief;<\/p>\n

A mighty calmness seated deep within<\/p>\n

Has occupied my body and my sense:<\/p>\n

It takes the world’s grief and transmutes to strength,<\/p>\n

It makes the world’s joy one with the joy of God.<\/p>\n

My love eternal sits throned on God’s calm;<\/p>\n

For Love must soar beyond the very heavens<\/p>\n

And find its secret sense ineffable;<\/p>\n

It must change its human ways to ways divine,<\/p>\n

Yet keep its sovereignty of earthly bliss.<\/p>\n

O Death, not for my heart’s sweet poignancy<\/p>\n

Nor for my happy body’s bliss alone<\/p>\n

I have claimed from thee the living Satyavan,<\/p>\n

But for his work and mine, our sacred charge.<\/p>\n

Our lives are God’s messengers beneath the stars;<\/p>\n

To dwell under death’s shadow they have come<\/p>\n

Tempting God’s light to earth for the ignorant race,<\/p>\n

His Love to fill the hollow in men’s hearts,<\/p>\n

His bliss to heal the unhappiness of the world.<\/p>\n

For I the Woman, am the force of God,<\/p>\n

He the Eternal’s delegate soul in man.<\/p>\n

My will is greater than thy law, O Death;<\/p>\n

My love is stronger than the bonds of Fate:<\/p>\n

Our love is the heavenly seal of the Supreme.<\/p>\n

I guard that seal against thy rending hands.<\/p>\n

Love must not cease to live upon the earth;<\/p>\n

For Love is the bright link twixt earth and heaven,<\/p>\n

Love is the far Transcendent’s angel here;<\/p>\n

Love is man’s lien on the Absolute.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n

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But to the woman Death the god replied,<\/p>\n

With the ironic laughter of his voice<\/p>\n

Discouraging the labour of the stars:<\/p>\n

\u201cEven so men cheat the Truth with splendid thoughts.<\/p>\n

Thus wilt thou hire the glorious charlatan Mind,<\/p>\n

To weave from his Ideal’s gossamer air<\/p>\n

A fine raiment for thy body’s nude desires<\/p>\n

And thy heart’s clutching greedy passion clothe?<\/p>\n

Daub not the web of life with magic hues:<\/p>\n

Make rather thy thought a plain and faithful glass<\/p>\n

Reflecting Matter and mortality,<\/p>\n

And know thy soul a product of the flesh,<\/p>\n

A made-up self in a constructed world.<\/p>\n

Thy words are large murmurs in a mystic dream.<\/p>\n

For how in the soiled heart of man could dwell<\/p>\n

The inarticulate grandeur of thy dream-built God,<\/p>\n

Or who can see a face and form divine<\/p>\n

In the naked two-legged worm thou callest man?<\/p>\n

O human face, put off mind-painted masks:<\/p>\n

The animal be, the worm that Nature meant;<\/p>\n

Accept thy futile birth, thy narrow life.<\/p>\n

For truth is bare like stone and hard like death;<\/p>\n

Bare in the bareness, hard with truth’s hardness live.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Savitri replied to the dire God:<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, I am human. Yet shall man by me,<\/p>\n

Since in humanity waits his hour the God,<\/p>\n

Trample thee down to reach the immortal heights,<\/p>\n

Transcending grief and pain and fate and death.<\/p>\n

Yes, my humanity is a mask of God:<\/p>\n

He dwells in me, the mover of my acts,<\/p>\n

Turning the great wheel of his cosmic work.<\/p>\n

I am the living body of his light,<\/p>\n

I am the thinking instrument of his power,<\/p>\n

I incarnate Wisdom in an earthly breast,<\/p>\n

I am his conquering and unslayable
\nWill.<\/p>\n

The formless Spirit drew in me its shape; <\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n
\n

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In me are the Nameless and the secret Name.\u201d<\/p>\n

Death from the incredulous Darkness sent its cry:<\/p>\n

\u201cO priestess in Imagination’s house,<\/p>\n

Persuade first Nature’s fixed immutable laws<\/p>\n

And make the impossible thy daily work.<\/p>\n

How canst thou force to wed two eternal foes?<\/p>\n

Irreconcilable in their embrace<\/p>\n

They cancel the glory of their pure extremes:<\/p>\n

An unhappy wedlock maims their stunted force.<\/p>\n

How shall thy will make one the true and false?<\/p>\n

Where Matter is all, there Spirit is a dream:<\/p>\n

If all are the Spirit, Matter is a lie,<\/p>\n

And who was the liar who forged the universe?<\/p>\n

The Real with the unreal cannot mate.<\/p>\n

He who would turn to God, must leave the world;<\/p>\n

He who would live in the Spirit, must give up life;<\/p>\n

He who has met the Self, renounces self.<\/p>\n

The voyagers of the million routes of mind<\/p>\n

Who have travelled through Existence to its end,<\/p>\n

Sages exploring the world-ocean’s vasts,<\/p>\n

Have found extinction the sole harbour safe.<\/p>\n

Two only are the doors of man’s escape,<\/p>\n

Death of his body Matter’s gate to peace,<\/p>\n

Death of his soul his last felicity.<\/p>\n

In me all take refuge, for I, Death, am God.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Savitri replied to mighty Death:<\/p>\n

\u201cMy heart is wiser than the Reason’s thoughts,<\/p>\n

My heart is stronger than thy bonds, O Death.<\/p>\n

It sees and feels the one Heart beat in all,<\/p>\n

It feels the high Transcendent’s sunlike hands,<\/p>\n

It sees the cosmic Spirit at its work;<\/p>\n

In the dim Night it lies alone with God.<\/p>\n

My heart’s strength can carry the grief of the universe<\/p>\n

And never falter from its luminous track,<\/p>\n

Its white tremendous orbit through God’s peace.<\/p>\n

It can drink up the sea of All-Delight <\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n
\n

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And never lose the white spiritual touch,<\/p>\n

The calm that broods in the deep Infinite.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said, \u201cArt thou indeed so strong, O heart,<\/p>\n

O soul, so free? And canst thou gather then<\/p>\n

Bright pleasure from my wayside flowering boughs,<\/p>\n

Yet falter not from thy hard journey’s goal,<\/p>\n

Meet the world’s dangerous touch and never fall?<\/p>\n

Show me thy strength and freedom from my laws.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Savitri answered, \u201cSurely I shall find<\/p>\n

Among the green and whispering woods of Life<\/p>\n

Close-bosomed pleasures, only mine since his,<\/p>\n

Or mine for him, because our joys are one.<\/p>\n

And if I linger, Time is ours and God’s,<\/p>\n

And if I fall, is not his hand near mine?<\/p>\n

All is a single plan; each wayside act<\/p>\n

Deepens the soul’s response, brings nearer the goal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Death the contemptuous Nihil answered her:<\/p>\n

\u201cSo prove thy absolute force to the wise gods,<\/p>\n

By choosing earthly joy! For self demand<\/p>\n

And yet from self and its gross masks live free.<\/p>\n

Then will I give thee all thy soul desires,<\/p>\n

All the brief joys earth keeps for mortal hearts.<\/p>\n

Only the one dearest wish that outweighs all,<\/p>\n

Hard laws forbid and thy ironic
\nFate.<\/p>\n

My will once wrought remains unchanged through Time,<\/p>\n

And Satyavan can never again be thine.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Savitri replied to the vague Power:<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the eyes of Darkness can look straight at Truth,<\/p>\n

Look at my heart and, knowing what I am,<\/p>\n

Give what thou wilt or what thou must, O Death.<\/p>\n

Nothing I claim but Satyavan alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was a hush as if of doubtful fates.<\/p>\n

As one disdainful still who yields a point,<\/p>\n

Death bowed his sovereign head in cold assent:<\/p>\n

\u201cI give to thee, saved from death and poignant fate<\/p>\n

Whatever once the living Satyavan <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 636<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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Desired in his heart for Savitri.<\/p>\n

Bright noons I give thee and unwounded dawns,<\/p>\n

Daughters of thy own shape in heart and mind,<\/p>\n

Fair hero sons and sweetness undisturbed<\/p>\n

Of union with thy husband dear and true.<\/p>\n

And thou shalt harvest in thy joyful house<\/p>\n

Felicity of thy surrounded eves.<\/p>\n

Love shall bind by thee many gathered hearts.<\/p>\n

The opposite sweetness in thy days shall meet<\/p>\n

Of tender service to thy life’s desired<\/p>\n

And loving empire over all thy loved,<\/p>\n

Two poles of bliss made one, O Savitri.<\/p>\n

Return, O child, to thy forsaken earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Savitri replied, \u201cThy gifts resist.<\/p>\n

Earth cannot flower if lonely I return.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then Death once more sent forth  his angry cry,<\/p>\n

As chides a lion his escaping prey:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat knowest thou of earth’s rich and changing life<\/p>\n

Who thinkst that, one man dead all joy must cease?<\/p>\n

Hope not to be unhappy till the end:<\/p>\n

For grief dies soon in the tired human heart;<\/p>\n

Soon other guests the empty chambers fill.<\/p>\n

A transient painting on a holiday’s floor<\/p>\n

Traced for a moment’s beauty love was made.<\/p>\n

Or if a voyager on the eternal trail,<\/p>\n

Its objects fluent change in its embrace<\/p>\n

Like waves to a swimmer upon infinite seas.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Savitri replied to the vague god,<\/p>\n

\u201cGive me back Satyavan, my only
\nLord.<\/p>\n

Thy thoughts are vacant to my soul that feels<\/p>\n

The deep eternal truth in transient things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Death answered her, \u201cReturn and try thy soul!<\/p>\n

Soon shalt thou find appeased that other men<\/p>\n

On lavish earth have beauty, strength and truth,<\/p>\n

And when thou hast half forgotten, one of these<\/p>\n

Shall wind himself around thy heart that needs <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 637<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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Some human answering heart against thy breast;<\/p>\n

For who, being mortal, can dwell glad alone?<\/p>\n

Then Satyavan shall glide into the past,<\/p>\n

A gentle memory pushed away from thee<\/p>\n

By new love and thy children’s tender hands,<\/p>\n

Till thou shalt wonder if thou lov’dst at all.<\/p>\n

Such is the life earth’s travail has conceived,<\/p>\n

A constant stream that never is the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Savitri replied to mighty Death:<\/p>\n

\u201cO dark ironic critic of God’s work,<\/p>\n

Thou mockst the mind and body’s faltering search<\/p>\n

For what the heart holds in a prophet hour<\/p>\n

And the immortal spirit shall make its own.<\/p>\n

Mine is a heart that worshipped, though forsaken,<\/p>\n

The image of the god its love adored;<\/p>\n

I have burned in flame to travel in his steps.<\/p>\n

Are we not they who bore vast solitude<\/p>\n

Seated upon the hills alone with God?<\/p>\n

Why dost thou vainly strive with me, O Death,<\/p>\n

A mind delivered from all twilight thoughts,<\/p>\n

To whom the secrets of the gods are plain?<\/p>\n

For now at last I
\nknow beyond all doubt<\/p>\n

The great stars burn with my unceasing fire<\/p>\n

And life and death are both its fuel made.<\/p>\n

Life only was my blind attempt to love:<\/p>\n

Earth saw my struggle, heaven my victory;<\/p>\n

All shall be seized, transcended; there shall kiss<\/p>\n

Casting their veils before the marriage fire<\/p>\n

The eternal bridegroom and eternal bride.<\/p>\n

The heavens accept our broken flights at last.<\/p>\n

On our life’s prow that breaks the waves of Time<\/p>\n

No signal light of hope has gleamed in vain.\u201d<\/p>\n

She spoke; the boundless members of the god<\/p>\n

As if by secret
\necstasy assailed<\/p>\n

Shuddered in silence as obscurely stir<\/p>\n

Ocean’s dim fields delivered to the moon. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 638<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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Then lifted up as by a sudden wind<\/p>\n

Around her in that vague and glimmering world<\/p>\n

The twilight trembled like a bursting veil.<\/p>\n

Thus with armed speech the great opponents strove.<\/p>\n

Around those spirits in the glittering mist<\/p>\n

A deepening half-light fled with pearly wings<\/p>\n

As if to reach some far ideal Morn.<\/p>\n

Outlined her thoughts flew through the gleaming haze<\/p>\n

Mingling bright-pinioned with its lights and veils<\/p>\n

And all her words like dazzling jewels, caught<\/p>\n

Into the glow of a
\nmysterious world<\/p>\n

Or tricked in the rainbow shifting of its hues,<\/p>\n

Like echoes swam fainting into far sound.<\/p>\n

All utterance, all mood must there become<\/p>\n

An unenduring tissue sewn by mind<\/p>\n

To make a gossamer robe of beautiful change.<\/p>\n

Intent upon her silent will she walked<\/p>\n

On the dim grass of vague unreal plains,<\/p>\n

A floating veil of visions in her front,<\/p>\n

A trailing robe of dreams behind her feet.<\/p>\n

But now her spirit’s flame of conscient force<\/p>\n

Retiring from a sweetness without fruit<\/p>\n

Called back her thoughts from speech to sit within<\/p>\n

In a deep room in meditation’s house.<\/p>\n

For only there could dwell the soul’s firm truth:<\/p>\n

Imperishable, a tongue of sacrifice,<\/p>\n

It flamed unquenched upon the central hearth<\/p>\n

Where burns for the high house-lord and his mate<\/p>\n

The homestead’s sentinel and witness fire<\/p>\n

From which the altars of the gods are lit.<\/p>\n

All still compelled went gliding on unchanged,<\/p>\n

Still was the order of these worlds reversed:<\/p>\n

The mortal led, the god and spirit obeyed<\/p>\n

And she behind was leader of their march<\/p>\n

And they in front were followers of her will.<\/p>\n

Onward they journeyed through the drifting ways <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 639<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Vaguely companioned
\nby the glimmering mists;<\/p>\n

But faster now all fled as if perturbed<\/p>\n

Escaping from the clearness of her soul.<\/p>\n

A heaven-bird upon jewelled wings of wind<\/p>\n

Borne like a coloured and embosomed fire,<\/p>\n

By spirits carried in a pearl-hued cave,<\/p>\n

On through the enchanted dimness moved her soul.<\/p>\n

Death walked in front of her and Satyavan,<\/p>\n

In the dark front of
\ndeath, a failing star.<\/p>\n

Above was the unseen balance of his fate.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

End of Canto Three <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 640<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n

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

  Canto Three    The Debate of Love and Death    A sad destroying cadence the voice sank; It seemed to lead the advancing march…<\/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-1026","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\/1026","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=1026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}