{"id":2440,"date":"2013-07-13T01:41:38","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:41:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2440"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:41:38","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:41:38","slug":"08-canto-three-the-glory-and-the-fall-of-life-vol-33-34-savitri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/33-34-savitri\/08-canto-three-the-glory-and-the-fall-of-life-vol-33-34-savitri","title":{"rendered":"-08_Canto Three – The Glory and the Fall of Life.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n\n\n
 <\/td>\n\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tCanto Three <\/font><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tThe Glory and the Fall of Life<\/font><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nA<\/font>N UNEVEN<\/b> broad ascent now lured his feet.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnswering a greater Nature’s troubled call<\/p>\n

He crossed the limits of embodied Mind<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd entered wide obscure disputed fields<\/p>\n

Where all was doubt and change and nothing sure,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA world of search and toil without repose.<\/p>\n

As one who meets the face of the Unknown,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA questioner with none to give reply,<\/p>\n

Attracted to a problem never solved,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAlways uncertain of the ground he trod,<\/p>\n

Always drawn on to an inconstant goal<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe travelled through a land peopled by doubts<\/p>\n

In shifting confines on a quaking base.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn front he saw a boundary ever unreached<\/p>\n

And thought himself at each step nearer now, \u2014<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA far retreating horizon of mirage.<\/p>\n

A vagrancy was there that brooked no home,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA journey of countless paths without a close.<\/p>\n

Nothing he found to satisfy his heart;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA tireless wandering sought and could not cease.<\/p>\n

There life is the manifest Incalculable,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA movement of unquiet seas, a long<\/p>\n

And venturous leap of spirit into Space,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA vexed disturbance in the eternal Calm,<\/p>\n

An impulse and passion of the Infinite.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAssuming whatever shape her fancy wills,<\/p>\n

Escaped from the restraint of settled forms<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe has left the safety of the tried and known.<\/p>\n

Unshepherded by the fear that walks through Time,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUndaunted by Fate that dogs and Chance that springs,<\/p>\n

She accepts disaster as a common risk;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

Careless of suffering, heedless of sin and fall,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe wrestles with danger and discovery<\/p>\n

In the unexplored expanses of the soul.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo be seemed only a long experiment,<\/p>\n

The hazard of a seeking ignorant Force<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat tries all truths and, finding none supreme,<\/p>\n

Moves on unsatisfied, unsure of its end.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs saw some inner mind, so life was shaped:<\/p>\n

From thought to thought she passed, from phase to phase,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTortured by her own powers or proud and blest,<\/p>\n

Now master of herself, now toy and slave.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA huge inconsequence was her action’s law,<\/p>\n

As if all possibility must be drained,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd anguish and bliss were pastimes of the heart.<\/p>\n

In a gallop of thunder-hooved vicissitudes<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe swept through the race-fields of Circumstance,<\/p>\n

Or, swaying, she tossed between her heights and deeps,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUplifted or broken on Time’s inconstant wheel.<\/p>\n

Amid a tedious crawl of drab desires<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe writhed, a worm mid worms in Nature’s mud,<\/p>\n

Then, Titan-statured, took all earth for food,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAmbitioned the seas for robe, for crown the stars<\/p>\n

And shouting strode from peak to giant peak,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tClamouring for worlds to conquer and to rule.<\/p>\n

Then, wantonly enamoured of Sorrow’s face,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe plunged into the anguish of the depths<\/p>\n

And, wallowing, clung to her own misery.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn dolorous converse with her squandered self<\/p>\n

She wrote the account of all that she had lost,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr sat with grief as with an ancient friend.<\/p>\n

A romp of violent raptures soon was spent,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr she lingered tied to an inadequate joy<\/p>\n

Missing the turns of fate, missing life’s goal.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA scene was planned for all her numberless moods<\/p>\n

Where each could be the law and way of life,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut none could offer a pure felicity;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

Only a flickering zest they left behind<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr the fierce lust that brings a dead fatigue.<\/p>\n

Amid her swift untold variety<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSomething remained dissatisfied, ever the same<\/p>\n

And in the new saw only a face of the old,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor every hour repeated all the rest<\/p>\n

And every change prolonged the same unease.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA spirit of her self and aim unsure,<\/p>\n

Tired soon of too much joy and happiness,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe needs the spur of pleasure and of pain<\/p>\n

And the native taste of suffering and unrest:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe strains for an end that never can she win.<\/p>\n

A perverse savour haunts her thirsting lips:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor the grief she weeps which came from her own choice,<\/p>\n

For the pleasure yearns that racked with wounds her breast;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAspiring to heaven she turns her steps towards hell.<\/p>\n

Chance she has chosen and danger for playfellows;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFate’s dreadful swing she has taken for cradle and seat.<\/p>\n

Yet pure and bright from the Timeless was her birth,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA lost world-rapture lingers in her eyes,<\/p>\n

Her moods are faces of the Infinite:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBeauty and happiness are her native right,<\/p>\n

And endless Bliss is her eternal home.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis now revealed its antique face of joy,<\/p>\n

A sudden disclosure to the heart of grief<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTempting it to endure and long and hope.<\/p>\n

Even in changing worlds bereft of peace,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn an air racked with sorrow and with fear<\/p>\n

And while his feet trod on a soil unsafe,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe saw the image of a happier state.<\/p>\n

In an architecture of hieratic Space<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCircling and mounting towards creation’s tops,<\/p>\n

At a blue height which never was too high<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor warm communion between body and soul,<\/p>\n

As far as heaven, as near as thought and hope,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\t\t\tGlimmered the kingdom of a griefless life.<\/p>\n

Above him in a new celestial vault<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOther than the heavens beheld by mortal eyes,<\/p>\n

As on a fretted ceiling of the gods,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn archipelago of laughter and fire,<\/p>\n

Swam stars apart in a rippled sea of sky.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTowered spirals, magic rings of vivid hue<\/p>\n

And gleaming spheres of strange felicity<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFloated through distance like a symbol world.<\/p>\n

On the trouble and the toil they could not share,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOn the unhappiness they could not aid,<\/p>\n

Impervious to life’s suffering, struggle, grief,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUntarnished by its anger, gloom and hate,<\/p>\n

Unmoved, untouched, looked down great visioned planes<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBlissful for ever in their timeless right.<\/p>\n

Absorbed in their own beauty and content,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOf their immortal gladness they live sure.<\/p>\n

Apart in their self-glory plunged, remote<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBurning they swam in a vague lucent haze,<\/p>\n

An everlasting refuge of dream-light,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA nebula of the splendours of the gods<\/p>\n

Made from the musings of eternity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAlmost unbelievable by human faith,<\/p>\n

Hardly they seemed the stuff of things that are.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs through a magic television’s glass<\/p>\n

Outlined to some magnifying inner eye<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThey shone like images thrown from a far scene<\/p>\n

Too high and glad for mortal lids to seize.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut near and real to the longing heart<\/p>\n

And to the body’s passionate thought and sense<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAre the hidden kingdoms of beatitude.<\/p>\n

In some close unattained realm which yet we feel,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImmune from the harsh clutch of Death and Time,<\/p>\n

Escaping the search of sorrow and desire,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn bright enchanted safe peripheries<\/p>\n

For ever wallowing in bliss they lie.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

In dream and trance and muse before our eyes,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAcross a subtle vision’s inner field,<\/p>\n

Wide rapturous landscapes fleeting from the sight,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe figures of the perfect kingdom pass<\/p>\n

And behind them leave a shining memory’s trail.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImagined scenes or great eternal worlds,<\/p>\n

Dream-caught or sensed, they touch our hearts with their depths;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUnreal-seeming, yet more real than life,<\/p>\n

Happier than happiness, truer than things true,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIf dreams these were or captured images,<\/p>\n

Dream’s truth made false earth’s vain realities.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn a swift eternal moment fixed there live<\/p>\n

Or ever recalled come back to longing eyes<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCalm heavens of imperishable Light,<\/p>\n

Illumined continents of violet peace,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOceans and rivers of the mirth of God<\/p>\n

And griefless countries under purple suns.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis, once a star of bright remote idea<\/p>\n

Or imagination’s comet trail of dream,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTook now a close shape of reality.<\/p>\n

The gulf between dream-truth, earth-fact was crossed,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe wonder-worlds of life were dreams no more;<\/p>\n

His vision made all they unveiled its own:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTheir scenes, their happenings met his eyes and heart<\/p>\n

And smote them with pure loveliness and bliss.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA breathless summit region drew his gaze<\/p>\n

Whose boundaries jutted into a sky of Self<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd dipped towards a strange ethereal base.<\/p>\n

The quintessence glowed of Life’s supreme delight.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOn a spiritual and mysterious peak<\/p>\n

Only a miracle’s high transfiguring line<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDivided life from the formless Infinite<\/p>\n

And sheltered Time against eternity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOut of that formless stuff Time mints his shapes;<\/p>\n

The Eternal’s quiet holds the cosmic act:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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The protean images of the World-Force<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHave drawn the strength to be, the will to last<\/p>\n

From a deep ocean of dynamic peace.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInverting the spirit’s apex towards life,<\/p>\n

She spends the plastic liberties of the One<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo cast in acts the dreams of her caprice,<\/p>\n

His wisdom’s call steadies her careless feet,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe props her dance upon a rigid base,<\/p>\n

His timeless still immutability<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMust standardise her creation’s miracle.<\/p>\n

Out of the Void’s unseeing energies<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInventing the scene of a concrete universe,<\/p>\n

By his thought she has fixed its paces, in its blind acts<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe sees by flashes of his all-knowing Light.<\/p>\n

At her will the inscrutable Supermind leans down<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo guide her force that feels but cannot know,<\/p>\n

Its breath of power controls her restless seas<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd life obeys the governing Idea.<\/p>\n

At her will, led by a luminous Immanence<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe hazardous experimenting Mind<\/p>\n

Pushes its way through obscure possibles<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMid chance formations of an unknowing world.<\/p>\n

Our human ignorance moves towards the Truth<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat Nescience may become omniscient,<\/p>\n

Transmuted instincts shape to divine thoughts,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThoughts house infallible immortal sight<\/p>\n

And Nature climb towards God’s identity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Master of the worlds self-made her slave<\/p>\n

Is the executor of her fantasies:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe has canalised the seas of omnipotence;<\/p>\n

She has limited by her laws the Illimitable.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Immortal bound himself to do her works;<\/p>\n

He labours at the tasks her Ignorance sets,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHidden in the cape of our mortality.<\/p>\n

The worlds, the forms her goddess fancy makes<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHave lost their origin on unseen heights:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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Even severed, straying from their timeless source,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEven deformed, obscure, accursed and fallen, \u2014<\/p>\n

Since even fall has its perverted joy<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd nothing she leaves out that serves delight, \u2014<\/p>\n

These too can to the peaks revert or here<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCut out the sentence of the spirit’s fall,<\/p>\n

Recover their forfeited divinity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAt once caught in an eternal vision’s sweep<\/p>\n

He saw her pride and splendour of highborn zones<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd her regions crouching in the nether deeps.<\/p>\n

Above was a monarchy of unfallen self,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBeneath was the gloomy trance of the abyss,<\/p>\n

An opposite pole or dim antipodes.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere were vasts of the glory of life’s absolutes:<\/p>\n

All laughed in a safe immortality<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd an eternal childhood of the soul<\/p>\n

Before darkness came and pain and grief were born<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhere all could dare to be themselves and one<\/p>\n

And Wisdom played in sinless innocence<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWith naked Freedom in Truth’s happy sun.<\/p>\n

There were worlds of her laughter and dreadful irony,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere were fields of her taste of toil and strife and tears;<\/p>\n

Her head lay on the breast of amorous Death,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSleep imitated awhile extinction’s peace.<\/p>\n

The light of God she has parted from his dark<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo test the savour of bare opposites.<\/p>\n

Here mingling in man’s heart their tones and hues<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHave woven his being’s mutable design,<\/p>\n

His life a forward-rippling stream in Time,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis nature’s constant fixed mobility,<\/p>\n

His soul a moving picture’s changeful film,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis cosmos-chaos of personality.<\/p>\n

The grand creatrix with her cryptic touch<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHas turned to pathos and power being’s self-dream,<\/p>\n

Made a passion-play of its fathomless mystery.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\t\t\tBut here were worlds lifted half-way to heaven.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Veil was there but not the Shadowy Wall;<\/p>\n

In forms not too remote from human grasp<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSome passion of the inviolate purity<\/p>\n

Broke through, a ray of the original Bliss.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHeaven’s joys might have been earth’s if earth were pure.<\/p>\n

There could have reached our divinised sense and heart<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSome natural felicity’s bright extreme,<\/p>\n

Some thrill of Supernature’s absolutes:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll strengths could laugh and sport on earth’s hard roads<\/p>\n

And never feel her cruel edge of pain,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll love could play and nowhere Nature’s shame.<\/p>\n

But she has stabled her dreams in Matter’s courts<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd still her doors are barred to things supreme.<\/p>\n

These worlds could feel God’s breath visiting their tops;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSome glimmer of the Transcendent’s hem was there.<\/p>\n

Across the white aeonic silences<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImmortal figures of embodied joy<\/p>\n

Traversed wide spaces near to eternity’s sleep.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPure mystic voices in beatitude’s hush<\/p>\n

Appealed to Love’s immaculate sweetnesses,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCalling his honeyed touch to thrill the worlds,<\/p>\n

His blissful hands to seize on Nature’s limbs,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis sweet intolerant might of union<\/p>\n

To take all beings into his saviour arms,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDrawing to his pity the rebel and the waif<\/p>\n

To force on them the happiness they refuse.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA chant hymeneal to the unseen Divine,<\/p>\n

A flaming rhapsody of white desire<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLured an immortal music into the heart<\/p>\n

And woke the slumbering ear of ecstasy.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA purer, fierier sense had there its home,<\/p>\n

A burning urge no earthly limbs can hold;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOne drew a large unburdened spacious breath<\/p>\n

And the heart sped from beat to rapturous beat.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe voice of Time sang of the Immortal’s joy;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

An inspiration and a lyric cry,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe moments came with ecstasy on their wings;<\/p>\n

Beauty unimaginable moved heaven-bare<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAbsolved from boundaries in the vasts of dream;<\/p>\n

The cry of the Birds of Wonder called from the skies<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo the deathless people of the shores of Light.<\/p>\n

Creation leaped straight from the hands of God;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMarvel and rapture wandered in the ways.<\/p>\n

Only to be was a supreme delight,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLife was a happy laughter of the soul<\/p>\n

And Joy was king with Love for minister.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe spirit’s luminousness was bodied there.<\/p>\n

Life’s contraries were lovers or natural friends<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd her extremes keen edges of harmony:<\/p>\n

Indulgence with a tender purity came<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd nursed the god on her maternal breast:<\/p>\n

There none was weak, so falsehood could not live;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIgnorance was a thin shade protecting light,<\/p>\n

Imagination the free-will of Truth,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPleasure a candidate for heaven’s fire;<\/p>\n

The intellect was Beauty’s worshipper,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tStrength was the slave of calm spiritual law,<\/p>\n

Power laid its head upon the breasts of Bliss.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere were summit-glories inconceivable,<\/p>\n

Autonomies of Wisdom’s still self-rule<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd high dependencies of her virgin sun,<\/p>\n

Illumined theocracies of the seeing soul<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThroned in the power of the Transcendent’s ray.<\/p>\n

A vision of grandeurs, a dream of magnitudes<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn sun-bright kingdoms moved with regal gait:<\/p>\n

Assemblies, crowded senates of the gods,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLife’s puissances reigned on seats of marble will,<\/p>\n

High dominations and autocracies<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd laurelled strengths and armed imperative mights.<\/p>\n

All objects there were great and beautiful,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll beings wore a royal stamp of power.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

There sat the oligarchies of natural Law,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tProud violent heads served one calm monarch brow:<\/p>\n

All the soul’s postures donned divinity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere met the ardent mutual intimacies<\/p>\n

Of mastery’s joy and the joy of servitude<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImposed by Love on Love’s heart that obeys<\/p>\n

And Love’s body held beneath a rapturous yoke.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll was a game of meeting kinglinesses.<\/p>\n

For worship lifts the worshipper’s bowed strength<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tClose to the god’s pride and bliss his soul adores:<\/p>\n

The ruler there is one with all he rules;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo him who serves with a free equal heart<\/p>\n

Obedience is his princely training’s school,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis nobility’s coronet and privilege,<\/p>\n

His faith is a high nature’s idiom,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis service a spiritual sovereignty.<\/p>\n

There were realms where Knowledge joined creative Power<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn her high home and made her all his own:<\/p>\n

The grand Illuminate seized her gleaming limbs<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd filled them with the passion of his ray<\/p>\n

Till all her body was its transparent house<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd all her soul a counterpart of his soul.<\/p>\n

Apotheosised, transfigured by wisdom’s touch,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer days became a luminous sacrifice;<\/p>\n

An immortal moth in happy and endless fire,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe burned in his sweet intolerable blaze.<\/p>\n

A captive Life wedded her conqueror.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn his wide sky she built her world anew;<\/p>\n

She gave to mind’s calm pace the motor’s speed,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo thinking a need to live what the soul saw,<\/p>\n

To living an impetus to know and see.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis splendour grasped her, her puissance to him clung;<\/p>\n

She crowned the Idea a king in purple robes,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPut her magic serpent sceptre in Thought’s grip,<\/p>\n

Made forms his inward vision’s rhythmic shapes<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd her acts the living body of his will.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

A flaming thunder, a creator flash,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis victor Light rode on her deathless Force;<\/p>\n

A centaur’s mighty gallop bore the god.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLife throned with mind, a double majesty.<\/p>\n

Worlds were there of a happiness great and grave<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd action tinged with dream, laughter with thought,<\/p>\n

And passion there could wait for its desire<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUntil it heard the near approach of God.<\/p>\n

Worlds were there of a childlike mirth and joy;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA carefree youthfulness of mind and heart<\/p>\n

Found in the body a heavenly instrument;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt lit an aureate halo round desire<\/p>\n

And freed the deified animal in the limbs<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo divine gambols of love and beauty and bliss.<\/p>\n

On a radiant soil that gazed at heaven’s smile<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA swift life-impulse stinted not nor stopped:<\/p>\n

It knew not how to tire; happy were its tears.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere work was play and play the only work,<\/p>\n

The tasks of heaven a game of godlike might:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA celestial bacchanal for ever pure,<\/p>\n

Unstayed by faintness as in mortal frames<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLife was an eternity of rapture’s moods:<\/p>\n

Age never came, care never lined the face.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImposing on the safety of the stars<\/p>\n

A race and laughter of immortal strengths,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe nude god-children in their play-fields ran<\/p>\n

Smiting the winds with splendour and with speed;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOf storm and sun they made companions,<\/p>\n

Sported with the white mane of tossing seas,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSlew distance trampled to death under their wheels<\/p>\n

And wrestled in the arenas of their force.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImperious in their radiance like the suns<\/p>\n

They kindled heaven with the glory of their limbs<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFlung like a divine largess to the world.<\/p>\n

A spell to force the heart to stark delight,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThey carried the pride and mastery of their charm<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

As if Life’s banner on the roads of Space.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIdeas were luminous comrades of the soul;<\/p>\n

Mind played with speech, cast javelins of thought,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut needed not these instruments’ toil to know;<\/p>\n

Knowledge was Nature’s pastime like the rest.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInvestitured with the fresh heart’s bright ray,<\/p>\n

An early God-instinct’s child inheritors,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTenants of the perpetuity of Time<\/p>\n

Still thrilling with the first creation’s bliss,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThey steeped existence in their youth of soul.<\/p>\n

An exquisite and vehement tyranny,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe strong compulsion of their will to joy<\/p>\n

Poured smiling streams of happiness through the world.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere reigned a breath of high immune content,<\/p>\n

A fortunate gait of days in tranquil air,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA flood of universal love and peace.<\/p>\n

A sovereignty of tireless sweetness lived<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLike a song of pleasure on the lips of Time.<\/p>\n

A large spontaneous order freed the will,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA sun-frank winging of the soul to bliss,<\/p>\n

The breadth and greatness of the unfettered act<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the swift fire-heart’s golden liberty.<\/p>\n

There was no falsehood of soul-severance,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere came no crookedness of thought or word<\/p>\n

To rob creation of its native truth;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll was sincerity and natural force.<\/p>\n

There freedom was sole rule and highest law.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn a happy series climbed or plunged these worlds:<\/p>\n

In realms of curious beauty and surprise,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn fields of grandeur and of titan power,<\/p>\n

Life played at ease with her immense desires.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA thousand Edens she could build nor pause;<\/p>\n

No bound was set to her greatness and to her grace<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd to her heavenly variety.<\/p>\n

Awake with a cry and stir of numberless souls,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tArisen from the breast of some deep Infinite,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>127<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Smiling like a new-born child at love and hope,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn her nature housing the Immortal’s power,<\/p>\n

In her bosom bearing the eternal Will,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNo guide she needed but her luminous heart:<\/p>\n

No fall debased the godhead of her steps,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNo alien Night had come to blind her eyes.<\/p>\n

There was no use for grudging ring or fence;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEach act was a perfection and a joy.<\/p>\n

Abandoned to her rapid fancy’s moods<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the rich coloured riot of her mind,<\/p>\n

Initiate of divine and mighty dreams,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMagician builder of unnumbered forms<\/p>\n

Exploring the measures of the rhythms of God,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAt will she wove her wizard wonder-dance,<\/p>\n

A Dionysian goddess of delight,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA Bacchant of creative ecstasy.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis world of bliss he saw and felt its call,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut found no way to enter into its joy;<\/p>\n

Across the conscious gulf there was no bridge.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA darker air encircled still his soul<\/p>\n

Tied to an image of unquiet life.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn spite of yearning mind and longing sense,<\/p>\n

To a sad Thought by grey experience formed<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd a vision dimmed by care and sorrow and sleep<\/p>\n

All this seemed only a bright desirable dream<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tConceived in a longing distance by the heart<\/p>\n

Of one who walks in the shadow of earth-pain.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAlthough he once had felt the Eternal’s clasp,<\/p>\n

Too near to suffering worlds his nature lived,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd where he stood were entrances of Night.<\/p>\n

Hardly, too close beset by the world’s care,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCan the dense mould in which we have been made<\/p>\n

Return sheer joy to joy, pure light to light.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor its tormented will to think and live<\/p>\n

First to a mingled pain and pleasure woke<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>128<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tAnd still it keeps the habit of its birth:<\/p>\n

A dire duality is our way to be.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the crude beginnings of this mortal world<\/p>\n

Life was not nor mind’s play nor heart’s desire.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhen earth was built in the unconscious Void<\/p>\n

And nothing was save a material scene,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIdentified with sea and sky and stone<\/p>\n

Her young gods yearned for the release of souls<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAsleep in objects, vague, inanimate.<\/p>\n

In that desolate grandeur, in that beauty bare,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the deaf stillness, mid the unheeded sounds,<\/p>\n

Heavy was the uncommunicated load<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOf Godhead in a world that had no needs;<\/p>\n

For none was there to feel or to receive.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis solid mass which brooked no throb of sense<\/p>\n

Could not contain their vast creative urge:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImmersed no more in Matter’s harmony,<\/p>\n

The Spirit lost its statuesque repose.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the uncaring trance it groped for sight,<\/p>\n

Passioned for the movements of a conscious heart,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFamishing for speech and thought and joy and love,<\/p>\n

In the dumb insensitive wheeling day and night<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHungered for the beat of yearning and response.<\/p>\n

The poised inconscience shaken with a touch,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe intuitive Silence trembling with a name,<\/p>\n

They cried to Life to invade the senseless mould<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd in brute forms awake divinity.<\/p>\n

A voice was heard on the mute rolling globe,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA murmur moaned in the unlistening Void.<\/p>\n

A being seemed to breathe where once was none:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSomething pent up in dead insentient depths,<\/p>\n

Denied conscious existence, lost to joy,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTurned as if one asleep since dateless time.<\/p>\n

Aware of its own buried reality,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tRemembering its forgotten self and right,<\/p>\n

It yearned to know, to aspire, to enjoy, to live.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>129<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Life heard the call and left her native light.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOverflowing from her bright magnificent plane<\/p>\n

On the rigid coil and sprawl of mortal Space,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHere too the gracious great-winged Angel poured<\/p>\n

Her splendour and her swiftness and her bliss,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHoping to fill a fair new world with joy.<\/p>\n

As comes a goddess to a mortal’s breast<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd fills his days with her celestial clasp,<\/p>\n

She stooped to make her home in transient shapes;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn Matter’s womb she cast the Immortal’s fire,<\/p>\n

In the unfeeling Vast woke thought and hope,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSmote with her charm and beauty flesh and nerve<\/p>\n

And forced delight on earth’s insensible frame.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAlive and clad with trees and herbs and flowers<\/p>\n

Earth’s great brown body smiled towards the skies,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAzure replied to azure in the sea’s laugh;<\/p>\n

New sentient creatures filled the unseen depths,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLife’s glory and swiftness ran in the beauty of beasts,<\/p>\n

Man dared and thought and met with his soul the world.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut while the magic breath was on its way,<\/p>\n

Before her gifts could reach our prisoned hearts,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA dark ambiguous Presence questioned all.<\/p>\n

The secret Will that robes itself with Night<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd offers to spirit the ordeal of the flesh,<\/p>\n

Imposed a mystic mask of death and pain.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInterned now in the slow and suffering years<\/p>\n

Sojourns the winged and wonderful wayfarer<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd can no more recall her happier state,<\/p>\n

But must obey the inert Inconscient’s law,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInsensible foundation of a world<\/p>\n

In which blind limits are on beauty laid<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd sorrow and joy as struggling comrades live.<\/p>\n

A dim and dreadful muteness fell on her:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAbolished was her subtle mighty spirit<\/p>\n

And slain her boon of child-god happiness,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd all her glory into littleness turned<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>130<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

And all her sweetness into a maimed desire.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo feed death with her works is here life’s doom.<\/p>\n

So veiled was her immortality that she seemed,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInflicting consciousness on unconscious things,<\/p>\n

An episode in an eternal death,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA myth of being that must for ever cease.<\/p>\n

Such was the evil mystery of her change.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEND OF<\/font>
\n\t\t\tCANTO<\/font> THREE<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>131<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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

  Canto Three   The Glory and the Fall of Life   AN UNEVEN broad ascent now lured his feet. Answering a greater Nature’s troubled…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-33-34-savitri","wpcat-50-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2440","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=2440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}