{"id":1030,"date":"2013-07-13T01:32:08","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1030"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:32:08","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:08","slug":"20-book-9-canto-02-the-journey-in-eternal-night-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\/20-book-9-canto-02-the-journey-in-eternal-night-vol-29-savitri-volume-29","title":{"rendered":"-20_Book 9 Canto 02 The Journey in Eternal Night.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
 <\/td>\n\n
\n

Canto Two<\/i> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe Journey in
\nEternal Night<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nand the Voice of
\nthe Darkness<\/font><\/span> <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Awhile on the chill dreadful edge of Night<\/p>\n

All stood as if a world were doomed to die<\/p>\n

And waited on the eternal silence’ brink.<\/p>\n

Heaven leaned towards them like a cloudy brow<\/p>\n

Of menace through the dim and voiceless hush.<\/p>\n

As thoughts stand mute on a despairing verge<\/p>\n

Where the last depths plunge into nothingness<\/p>\n

And the last dreams must end, they paused; in their front<\/p>\n

Were glooms like
\nshadowy wings, behind them pale<\/p>\n

The lifeless evening was a dead man’s gaze.<\/p>\n

Hungry beyond, the night desired her soul.<\/p>\n

But still in its lone niche of templed<\/span>
\nstrength<\/p>\n

Motionless, her flame-bright spirit, mute, erect,<\/p>\n

Burned like a torch-fire from a windowed room<\/p>\n

Pointing against the darkness’ sombre<\/span>
\nbreast.<\/p>\n

The Woman first affronted the Abyss<\/p>\n

Daring to journey through the eternal Night.<\/p>\n

Armoured<\/span> with light she advanced
\nher foot to plunge<\/p>\n

Into the dread and hueless<\/span>
\nvacancy;<\/p>\n

Immortal, unappalled<\/span> her spirit
\nfaced<\/p>\n

The danger of the ruthless eyeless waste.<\/p>\n

Against night’s inky ground they stirred, moulding<\/span><\/p>\n

Mysterious motion on her human tread,<\/p>\n

A swimming action and a drifting march<\/p>\n

Like figures moving before eyelids closed:<\/p>\n

All as in dreams went slipping, gliding on.<\/p>\n

The rock-gate’s heavy walls were left behind;<\/p>\n

As if through passages of receding time<\/p>\n

The present and past into the Timeless lapsed;<\/p>\n

Arrested upon dim adventure’s brink, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 582<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

The future ended drowned in nothingness.<\/p>\n

Amid collapsing shapes they wound obscure;<\/p>\n

The fading vestibules of a tenebrous world<\/p>\n

Received them, where they seemed to move and yet<\/p>\n

Be still, nowhere advancing yet to pass,<\/p>\n

A dumb procession a dim picture bounds,<\/p>\n

Not conscious forms threading a real scene.<\/p>\n

A mystery of terror’s boundlessness,<\/p>\n

Gathering its hungry strength the huge pitiless void<\/p>\n

Surrounded slowly with its soundless depths,<\/p>\n

And monstrous, cavernous, a shapeless throat<\/p>\n

Devoured her into its shadowy strangling mass,<\/p>\n

The fierce spiritual agony of a dream.<\/p>\n

A curtain of impenetrable dread,<\/p>\n

The darkness hung around her cage of sense<\/p>\n

As, when the trees have turned to blotted shades<\/p>\n

And the last friendly glimmer fades away,<\/p>\n

Around a bullock in the forest tied<\/p>\n

By hunters closes in no empty night.<\/p>\n

The thought that strives in the world was here unmade;<\/p>\n

Its effort it renounced to live and know,<\/p>\n

Convinced at last that it had never been;<\/p>\n

It perished, all its dream of action done:<\/p>\n

This clotted cypher<\/span> was its dark
\nresult.<\/p>\n

In the smothering stress of this stupendous Nought<\/span><\/p>\n

Mind could not think, breath could not breathe, the soul<\/p>\n

Could not remember or feel itself; it seemed<\/p>\n

A hollow gulf of sterile emptiness,<\/p>\n

A zero oblivious of the sum it closed,<\/p>\n

An abnegation of the Maker’s joy<\/p>\n

Saved by no wide repose, no depth of peace.<\/p>\n

On all that claims here to be Truth and God<\/p>\n

And conscious self and the revealing Word<\/p>\n

And the creative rapture of the Mind<\/p>\n

And Love and Knowledge and heart’s delight, there fell<\/p>\n

The immense refusal of the eternal No. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 583<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

As disappears a golden lamp in gloom<\/p>\n

Borne into distance from the
\neye’s desire,<\/p>\n

Into the shadows vanished Savitri.<\/p>\n

There was no course, no path, no end or goal:<\/p>\n

Visionless she moved amid insensible gulfs,<\/p>\n

Or drove through some great black unknowing
\nWaste<\/p>\n

Or whirled in a dumb eddy of meeting winds<\/p>\n

Assembled by the titan hands of Chance.<\/p>\n

There was none with her in the dreadful Vast:<\/p>\n

She saw no more the vague tremendous god,<\/p>\n

Her eyes had lost their luminous Satyavan.<\/p>\n

Yet not for this her spirit failed, but held<\/p>\n

More deeply than the bounded senses can<\/p>\n

Which grasp
\nexternally and find to lose<\/p>\n

Its object loved. So when on earth they lived<\/p>\n

She had felt him straying through the glades, the glades<\/p>\n

A scene in her, its clefts her being’s vistas<\/p>\n

Opening their secrets to his search and joy,<\/p>\n

Because to jealous sweetness in her heart<\/p>\n

Whatever happy space his cherished feet<\/p>\n

Preferred, must be at once her soul embracing<\/p>\n

His body, passioning<\/span> dumbly to his
\ntread.<\/p>\n

But now a silent gulf between them came<\/p>\n

And to abysmal loneliness she fell,<\/p>\n

Even from herself cast out, from love remote.<\/p>\n

Long hours, since long it seems when sluggish time<\/p>\n

Is measured by the throbs of the soul’s pain,<\/p>\n

In an unreal darkness empty and drear<\/p>\n

She travelled<\/span> treading on the
\ncorpse of life,<\/p>\n

Lost in a blindness of extinguished souls.<\/p>\n

Solitary in the anguish of the void<\/p>\n

She lived in spite of death, she conquered still;<\/p>\n

In vain her puissant being was oppressed:<\/p>\n

Her heavy long monotony of pain<\/p>\n

Tardily of its fierce self-torture tired.<\/p>\n

At first a faint inextinguishable gleam, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 584<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Pale but immortal, flickered in the gloom<\/p>\n

As if a memory came to spirits dead,<\/p>\n

A memory that wished to live again,<\/p>\n

Dissolved from mind in Nature’s natal sleep.<\/p>\n

It wandered like a lost ray of the moon<\/p>\n

Revealing to the night her soul of dread;<\/p>\n

Serpentine in the gleam the darkness lolled,<\/p>\n

Its black hoods jewelled<\/span> with the
\nmystic glow;<\/p>\n

Its dull sleek folds shrank back and coiled and slid,<\/p>\n

As though they felt all light a cruel pain<\/p>\n

And suffered from the pale approach of hope.<\/p>\n

Night felt assailed her heavy sombre<\/span>
\nreign;<\/p>\n

The splendour<\/span> of some bright
\neternity<\/p>\n

Threatened with this faint beam of wandering Truth<\/p>\n

Her empire of the everlasting Nought<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Implacable in her intolerant strength<\/p>\n

And confident that she alone was true,<\/p>\n

She strove to stifle the frail dangerous ray;<\/p>\n

Aware of an all-negating immensity<\/p>\n

She reared her giant head of Nothingness,<\/p>\n

Her mouth of darkness swallowing all that is;<\/p>\n

She saw in herself the tenebrous Absolute.<\/p>\n

But still the light prevailed and still it grew,<\/p>\n

And Savitri to her lost self awoke;<\/p>\n

Her limbs refused the cold embrace of death,<\/p>\n

Her heart-beats triumphed in the grasp of pain;<\/p>\n

Her soul persisted claiming for its joy<\/p>\n

The soul of the beloved now seen no more.<\/p>\n

Before her in the stillness of the world<\/p>\n

Once more she heard the treading of a god,<\/p>\n

And out of the dumb darkness Satyavan,<\/p>\n

Her husband, grew into a luminous shade.<\/p>\n

Then a sound pealed through that dead monstrous realm:<\/p>\n

Vast like the surge in a tired swimmer’s ears,<\/p>\n

Clamouring<\/span>, a fatal iron-hearted
\nroar,<\/p>\n

Death missioned<\/span> to the night his
\nlethal call. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 585<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

\u201cThis is my silent dark immensity,<\/p>\n

This is the home of everlasting Night,<\/p>\n

This is the secrecy of Nothingness<\/p>\n

Entombing the vanity of life’s desires.<\/p>\n

Hast thou beheld thy source, O transient heart,<\/p>\n

And known from what the dream thou art was made?<\/p>\n

In this stark sincerity of nude emptiness<\/p>\n

Hopest<\/span> thou still always to last
\nand love?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Woman answered not. Her spirit refused<\/p>\n

The voice of the Night that knew and Death that thought.<\/p>\n

In her beginningless<\/span> infinity<\/p>\n

Through her soul’s reaches unconfined she gazed;<\/p>\n

She saw the undying fountains of her life,<\/p>\n

She knew herself eternal without birth.<\/p>\n

But still opposing her with endless night<\/p>\n

Death, the dire god, inflicted on her eyes<\/p>\n

The immortal calm of his tremendous gaze:<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough thou hast survived the unborn void<\/p>\n

Which never shall forgive, while Time endures,<\/p>\n

The primal violence that fashioned thought,<\/p>\n

Forcing the immobile
\nVast to suffer and live<\/p>\n

This sorrowful victory only hast thou won<\/p>\n

To live for a little without Satyavan.<\/p>\n

What shall the ancient goddess give to thee<\/p>\n

Who helps thy heart-beats? Only she prolongs<\/p>\n

The nothing dreamed existence and delays<\/p>\n

With the labour of living thy eternal sleep.<\/p>\n

A fragile miracle of thinking clay,<\/p>\n

Armed with illusions walks the child of Time.<\/p>\n

To fill the void around he feels and dreads,<\/p>\n

The void he came from and to which he goes,<\/p>\n

He magnifies his self and names it God.<\/p>\n

He calls the heavens to help his suffering hopes.<\/p>\n

He sees above him with a longing heart<\/p>\n

Bare spaces more unconscious than himself<\/p>\n

That have not even
\nhis privilege of mind <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 586<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

And empty of all but
\ntheir unreal blue<\/p>\n

And peoples them with bright and merciful powers.<\/p>\n

For the sea roars around him and earth quakes<\/p>\n

Beneath his steps, and fire is at his doors,<\/p>\n

And death prowls baying through the woods of life.<\/p>\n

Moved by the Presences with which he yearns,<\/p>\n

He offers in implacable shrines his soul<\/p>\n

And clothes all with the beauty of his dreams.<\/p>\n

The gods who watch the earth with sleepless eyes<\/p>\n

And guide its giant stumblings<\/span>
\nthrough the void,<\/p>\n

Have given to man the burden of his mind;<\/p>\n

In his unwilling heart they have lit their fires<\/p>\n

And sown in it incurable unrest.<\/p>\n

His mind is a hunter upon tracks unknown;<\/p>\n

Amusing Time with vain discovery,<\/p>\n

He deepens with thought the mystery of his fate<\/p>\n

And turns to song his laughter and his tears.<\/p>\n

His mortality vexing with the immortal’s dreams,<\/p>\n

Troubling his transience with the infinite’s<\/span>
\nbreath<\/p>\n

They gave him hungers which no food can fill;<\/p>\n

He is the cattle of the shepherd gods.<\/p>\n

His body the tether with which he is tied,<\/p>\n

They cast for fodder grief and hope and joy:<\/p>\n

His pasture ground they have fenced with Ignorance.<\/p>\n

Into his fragile undefended breast<\/p>\n

They have breathed a courage that is met by death,<\/p>\n

They have given a wisdom that is mocked by night,<\/p>\n

They have traced a journey that foresees no goal.<\/p>\n

Aimless man toils in
\nan uncertain world<\/p>\n

Lulled by inconstant pauses of his pain,<\/p>\n

Scourged like a beast by the infinite desire,<\/p>\n

Bound to the chariot of the dreadful gods.<\/p>\n

But if thou still canst hope and still wouldst love,<\/p>\n

Return to thy body’s shell they tie to earth,<\/p>\n

And with thy heart’s little remnants try to live.<\/p>\n

Hope not to win back to thee Satyavan. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 587<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Yet since thy strength deserves no trivial crown,<\/p>\n

Gifts I can give to soothe thy wounded life.<\/p>\n

The pacts which transient beings make with fate,<\/p>\n

And the wayside sweetness earth-bound hearts would pluck,<\/p>\n

These if thy will accepts make freely thine<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Choose a life’s hopes for thy deceiving prize.\u201d<\/p>\n

As ceased the ruthless and tremendous Voice,<\/p>\n

Unendingly there rose
\nin Savitri<\/p>\n

Like moonlit ridges
\non a shuddering flood<\/p>\n

A stir of thoughts out of some silence born<\/p>\n

Across the sea of her dumb fathomless heart.<\/p>\n

At last she spoke; her voice was heard by Night:<\/p>\n

\u201cI bow not to thee, O huge mask of
\nDeath,<\/p>\n

Black lie of night to the cowed soul of man,<\/p>\n

Unreal, inescapable end of things,<\/p>\n

Thou grim jest played with the immortal spirit.<\/p>\n

Conscious of immortality I walk.<\/p>\n

A victor spirit conscious of my force,<\/p>\n

Not as a suppliant to thy gates I came:<\/p>\n

Unslain<\/span> I have survived the clutch
\nof Night.<\/p>\n

My first strong grief moves not my seated mind;<\/p>\n

My unwept tears have turned to pearls of strength:<\/p>\n

I have transformed my ill-shaped brittle clay<\/p>\n

Into the hardness of a statued<\/span>
\nsoul.<\/p>\n

Now in the wrestling of the splendid gods<\/p>\n

My spirit shall be obstinate and strong<\/p>\n

Against the vast refusals
\nof the world.<\/p>\n

I stoop not with the subject mob of minds<\/p>\n

Who run to glean with eager satisfied hands<\/p>\n

And pick from its mire mid many trampling feet<\/p>\n

Its scornful small concessions to the weak.<\/p>\n

Mine is the labour of the battling gods:<\/p>\n

Imposing on the slow reluctant years<\/p>\n

The flaming will that reigns beyond the stars,<\/p>\n

They lay the law of Mind on Matter’s works<\/p>\n

And win the soul’s wish from earth’s inconscient
\nforce. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 588<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

First I demand whatever Satyavan,<\/p>\n

My husband, waking in the forest’s charm<\/p>\n

Out of his long pure childhood’s lonely dreams,<\/p>\n

Desired and had not for his beautiful life.<\/p>\n

Give, if thou must, or if thou canst, refuse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Death bowed his head in scornful cold assent,<\/p>\n

The builder of this dreamlike earth for man<\/p>\n

Who has mocked with vanity all gifts he gave.<\/p>\n

Uplifting his disastrous voice he spoke:<\/p>\n

\u201cIndulgent to the dreams my touch shall break,<\/p>\n

I yield to his blind father’s longing heart<\/p>\n

Kingdom and power and friends and greatness lost<\/p>\n

And royal trappings for his peaceful age,<\/p>\n

The pallid pomps<\/span> of man’s
\ndeclining days,<\/p>\n

The silvered decadent glories of life’s fall.<\/p>\n

To one who wiser grew by adverse
\nfate,<\/p>\n

Goods I restore the deluded soul prefers<\/p>\n

To impersonal nothingness’s<\/span> bare
\nsublime.<\/p>\n

The sensuous solace of the light I give<\/p>\n

To eyes which could have found a larger realm,<\/p>\n

A deeper vision in their fathomless night.<\/p>\n

For that this man desired and asked in vain<\/p>\n

While still he lived on earth and cherished hope.<\/p>\n

Back from the grandeur of my perilous realms<\/p>\n

Go, mortal, to thy small permitted sphere!<\/p>\n

Hasten swift-footed, lest to slay thy life<\/p>\n

The great laws thou hast violated, moved,<\/p>\n

Open at last on thee their marble eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Savitri answered the disdainful Shade:<\/p>\n

\u201cWorld-spirit, I was thy equal spirit born.<\/p>\n

I am immortal in my mortality.<\/p>\n

I tremble not before the immobile gaze<\/p>\n

Of the unchanging marble hierarchies<\/p>\n

That look with the stone eyes of Law and Fate.<\/p>\n

My soul can meet them with its living fire.<\/p>\n

Out of thy shadow give me back again <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 589<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Into earth’s flowering spaces Satyavan<\/p>\n

In the sweet transiency<\/span> of human
\nlimbs<\/p>\n

To do with him my spirit’s burning will.<\/p>\n

I will bear with him the ancient Mother’s load,<\/p>\n

I will follow with him earth’s path that leads to God.<\/p>\n

Else shall the
\neternal spaces open to me<\/p>\n

While round us strange horizons far recede,<\/p>\n

Travelling<\/span> together the immense
\nunknown.<\/p>\n

For I who have trod with him the tracts of Time,<\/p>\n

Can meet behind his steps whatever night<\/p>\n

Or unimaginable stupendous dawn<\/p>\n

Breaks on our spirits in the untrod<\/span>
\nBeyond.<\/p>\n

Wherever thou leadst<\/span> his soul I shall
\npursue.\u201d<\/p>\n

But to her claim opposed, implacable,<\/p>\n

Insisting on the immutable Decree,<\/p>\n

Insisting on the immitigable Law<\/p>\n

And the insignificance of created things,<\/p>\n

Out of the rolling wastes of night there came<\/p>\n

Born from the enigma of the unknowable depths<\/p>\n

A voice of majesty and appalling scorn.<\/p>\n

As when the storm-haired Titan-striding sea<\/p>\n

Throws on a swimmer its tremendous laugh<\/p>\n

Remembering all the joy its waves had drowned,<\/p>\n

So from the darkness of the sovereign night<\/p>\n

Against the Woman’s boundless heart arose<\/p>\n

The almighty cry of
\nuniversal Death:<\/p>\n

\u201cHast thou god-wings or feet that tread my stars,<\/p>\n

Frail creature with the courage that aspires,<\/p>\n

Forgetting thy bounds of thought, thy mortal role?<\/p>\n

Their orbs were coiled before thy soul was formed.<\/p>\n

I, Death, created them out of my void;<\/p>\n

All things I have built in them and I destroy.<\/p>\n

I made the worlds my net, each joy a mesh.<\/p>\n

A Hunger amorous of its suffering prey,<\/p>\n

Life that devours, my image see in things.<\/p>\n

Mortal, whose spirit is my wandering breath, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 590<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Whose transience was imagined by my smile,<\/p>\n

Flee clutching thy poor gains to thy trembling breast<\/p>\n

Pierced by my pangs Time shall not soon appease.<\/p>\n

Blind slave of my deaf force whom I compel<\/p>\n

To sin that I may punish, to desire<\/p>\n

That I may scourge thee with despair and grief<\/p>\n

And thou come bleeding to me at the last,<\/p>\n

Thy nothingness recognised<\/span>, my
\ngreatness known,<\/p>\n

Turn nor attempt forbidden happy fields<\/p>\n

Meant for the souls that can obey my law,<\/p>\n

Lest in their sombre<\/span> shrines thy
\ntread awake<\/p>\n

From their uneasy iron-hearted sleep<\/p>\n

The Furies who avenge fulfilled desire.<\/p>\n

Dread lest in skies where passion hoped to live,<\/p>\n

The Unknown’s lightnings<\/span> start
\nand terrified,<\/p>\n

Lone, sobbing, hunted by the hounds of heaven,<\/p>\n

A wounded and forsaken soul, thou flee<\/p>\n

Through the long torture of the centuries,<\/p>\n

Nor many lives exhaust the tireless Wrath<\/p>\n

Hell cannot slake nor
\nheaven’s mercy assuage.<\/p>\n

I will take from thee the black eternal grip:<\/p>\n

Clasping in thy heart thy fate’s exigiuous doles<\/p>\n

Depart in peace, if peace for man is just.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Savitri answered meeting scorn with scorn,<\/p>\n

The mortal woman to the dreadful Lord:<\/p>\n

\u201cWho is this God imagined by thy night,<\/p>\n

Contemptuously creating worlds disdained,<\/p>\n

Who made for vanity the brilliant stars?<\/p>\n

Not he who has reared his temple in my thoughts<\/p>\n

And made his sacred floor my human heart.<\/p>\n

My God is Will and triumphs in his paths,<\/p>\n

My God is Love and sweetly suffers all.<\/p>\n

To him I have offered hope for sacrifice<\/p>\n

And gave my longings as a sacrament.<\/p>\n

Who shall prohibit or hedge in his course,<\/p>\n

The wonderful, the charioteer, the swift? <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 591<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

A traveller<\/span> of the million roads
\nof life,<\/p>\n

His steps familiar with the lights of heaven<\/p>\n

Tread without pain the sword-paved courts of hell;<\/p>\n

There he descends to edge eternal joy.<\/p>\n

Love’s golden wings have power to fan thy void:<\/p>\n

The eyes of love gaze starlike<\/span>
\nthrough death’s night,<\/p>\n

The feet of love tread naked hardest worlds.<\/p>\n

He labours<\/span> in the depths, exults
\non the heights;<\/p>\n

He shall remake thy universe, O Death.\u201d<\/p>\n

She spoke and for a while no voice replied,<\/p>\n

While still they travelled<\/span> through
\nthe trackless night<\/p>\n

And still that gleam was like a pallid eye<\/p>\n

Troubling the darkness with its doubtful gaze.<\/p>\n

Then once more came a deep and perilous pause<\/p>\n

In that unreal journey through blind Nought<\/span>;<\/p>\n

Once more a Thought, a Word in the void arose<\/p>\n

And Death made answer to the human soul:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is thy hope? to what dost thou aspire?<\/p>\n

This is thy body’s sweetest lure of bliss,<\/p>\n

Assailed by pain a frail precarious form,<\/p>\n

To please for a few years thy faltering sense<\/p>\n

With honey of physical longings and the heart’s fire<\/p>\n

And a vain oneness seeking to embrace<\/p>\n

The brilliant idol of a fugitive hour.<\/p>\n

And thou, what art thou, soul, thou glorious dream<\/p>\n

Of brief emotions made and glittering thoughts,<\/p>\n

A thin dance of fireflies speeding through the night,<\/p>\n

A sparkling ferment in life’s sunlit mire?<\/p>\n

Wilt thou claim immortality, O heart,<\/p>\n

Crying against the eternal witnesses<\/p>\n

That thou and he are endless powers and last?<\/p>\n

Death only lasts and the inconscient Void.<\/p>\n

I only am eternal and endure.<\/p>\n

I am the shapeless formidable Vast,<\/p>\n

I am the emptiness that men call Space,<\/p>\n

I am a timeless Nothingness carrying all, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 592<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

I am the Illimitable, the mute Alone.<\/p>\n

I, Death, am He; there is no other God.<\/p>\n

All from my depths are born, they live by death;<\/p>\n

All to my depths return and are no more.<\/p>\n

I have made a world by my inconscient Force.<\/p>\n

My force is Nature that creates and slays<\/p>\n

The hearts that hope, the limbs that long to live.<\/p>\n

I have made man her instrument and slave,<\/p>\n

His body I made my banquet, his life my food.<\/p>\n

Man has no other help but only Death;<\/p>\n

He comes to me at his end for rest and peace.<\/p>\n

I, Death, am the one refuge of thy soul.<\/p>\n

The gods to whom man prays can help not man;<\/p>\n

They are my imaginations and my moods<\/p>\n

Reflected in him by illusion’s power.<\/p>\n

That which thou seest<\/span> as thy
\nimmortal self<\/p>\n

Is a shadowy icon of my infinite,<\/p>\n

Is Death in thee dreaming of eternity.<\/p>\n

I am the Immobile in which all things move,<\/p>\n

I am the nude Inane in which they cease:<\/p>\n

I have no body and no tongue to speak,<\/p>\n

I commune not with human eye and ear;<\/p>\n

Only thy thought gave a figure to my void.<\/p>\n

Because, O aspirant to divinity,<\/p>\n

Thou calledst<\/span> me to wrestle with
\nthy soul,<\/p>\n

I have assumed a face, a form, a voice.<\/p>\n

But if there were a being witnessing all,<\/p>\n

How should he help thy passionate desire?<\/p>\n

Aloof he watches sole and absolute,<\/p>\n

Indifferent to thy cry in nameless calm.<\/p>\n

His being is pure, unwounded, motionless, one.<\/p>\n

One endless watches the inconscient scene<\/p>\n

Where all things perish, as the foam the stars.<\/p>\n

The One lives for ever. There no Satyavan<\/p>\n

Changing was born and there no Savitri<\/p>\n

Claims from brief life her bribe of joy. There love <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 593<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Came never with his fretful eyes of tears,<\/p>\n

Nor Time is there nor the vain vasts<\/span>
\nof Space.<\/p>\n

It wears no living face, it has no name,<\/p>\n

No gaze, no heart that throbs, it asks no second<\/p>\n

To aid its being or to share its joys.<\/p>\n

It is delight immortally alone.<\/p>\n

If thou desirest<\/span> immortality,<\/p>\n

Be then alone sufficient to thy soul:<\/p>\n

Live in thyself; forget the man thou lov’st<\/span>.<\/p>\n

My last grand death shall rescue thee from life;<\/p>\n

Then shalt thou rise into thy unnamed source.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Savitri replied to the dread Voice:<\/p>\n

\u201cO Death, who reasonest<\/span>, I reason
\nnot,<\/p>\n

Reason that scans and breaks, but cannot build<\/p>\n

Or builds in vain because she doubts her work.<\/p>\n

I am, I love, I see, I act, I will.\u201d<\/p>\n

Death answered her, one deep surrounding cry:<\/p>\n

\u201cKnow also. Knowing, thou shalt cease to love<\/p>\n

And cease to will, delivered from thy heart.<\/p>\n

So shalt thou rest for ever and be still,<\/p>\n

Consenting to the impermanence of things.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

\u201cWhen I have loved for ever, I shall know.<\/p>\n

Love in me knows the truth all changings<\/span>
\nmask.<\/p>\n

I know that knowledge is a vast embrace:<\/p>\n

I know that every being is myself,<\/p>\n

In every heart is hidden the myriad One.<\/p>\n

I know the calm Transcendent bears the world,<\/p>\n

The veiled Inhabitant, the silent Lord:<\/p>\n

I feel his secret act, his intimate fire;<\/p>\n

I hear the murmur of the cosmic Voice.<\/p>\n

I know my coming was a wave from God.<\/p>\n

For all his suns were conscient<\/span> in
\nmy birth,<\/p>\n

And one who loves in us came veiled by death.<\/p>\n

Then man was born among the monstrous stars<\/p>\n

Dowered with a mind and heart to conquer thee.\u201d <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 594<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

In the eternity of his ruthless will<\/p>\n

Sure of his empire and his armoured<\/span>
\nmight,<\/p>\n

Like one disdaining violent helpless words<\/p>\n

From victim lips Death answered not again.<\/p>\n

He stood in silence and in darkness wrapped,<\/p>\n

A figure motionless, a shadow vague,<\/p>\n

Girt with the terrors of his secret sword.<\/p>\n

Half-seen in clouds appeared a sombre<\/span>
\nface;<\/p>\n

Night’s dusk tiara was his matted hair,<\/p>\n

The ashes of the pyre his forehead’s sign.<\/p>\n

Once more a Wanderer in the unending Night,<\/p>\n

Blindly forbidden by dead vacant eyes,<\/p>\n

She travelled<\/span> through the dumb unhoping<\/span> vasts<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Around her rolled the shuddering waste of gloom,<\/p>\n

Its swallowing emptiness and joyless death<\/p>\n

Resentful of her thought and life and love.<\/p>\n

Through the long fading night by her compelled,<\/p>\n

Gliding half-seen on their unearthly path,<\/p>\n

Phantasmal in the dimness moved the three.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

End of Canto Two<\/p>\n

End of Book Nine <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 595<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n

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

  Canto Two    The Journey in Eternal Night and the Voice of the Darkness    Awhile on the chill dreadful edge of Night All…<\/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-1030","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\/1030","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=1030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}