{"id":2453,"date":"2013-07-13T01:41:43","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:41:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2453"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:41:43","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:41:43","slug":"43-canto-two-the-journey-in-eternal-night-and-the-voice-of-the-darkness-vol-33-34-savitri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/33-34-savitri\/43-canto-two-the-journey-in-eternal-night-and-the-voice-of-the-darkness-vol-33-34-savitri","title":{"rendered":"-43_Canto Two – The Journey in Eternal Night and the Voice of the Darkness.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n\n\n
<\/td>\n\n<\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Journey in Eternal Night<\/font><\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

\nand the Voice of the Darkness<\/font><\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA<\/font>WHILE<\/b> on the chill dreadful edge of Night<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tAnd waited on the eternal silence’ brink.<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tWere glooms like shadowy wings, behind them, pale,<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tPointing against the darkness’ sombre breast.<\/p>\n

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tInto the dread and hueless vacancy;<\/p>\n

Immortal, unappalled, her spirit faced<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tThe rock-gate’s heavy walls were left behind;<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tPresent and past into the Timeless lapsed;<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tA mystery of terror’s boundlessness,<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tA curtain of impenetrable dread,<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tThis clotted cypher was its dark result.<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tAn abnegation of the Maker’s joy<\/p>\n

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tAnd the creative rapture of the Mind<\/p>\n

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

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

\n

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

\n\t\t\tBorne into distance from the eyes’ desire,<\/p>\n

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tOr drove through some great black unknowing waste,<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tWhich grasp externally and find to lose,<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tWhatever happy space his cherished feet<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tHis body, passioning dumbly to his tread.<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tHer heavy long monotony of pain<\/p>\n

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

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tDissolved from mind in Nature’s natal sleep.<\/p>\n

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tIts black hoods jewelled with the mystic glow;<\/p>\n

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tNight felt assailed her heavy sombre reign;<\/p>\n

The splendour of some bright eternity<\/p>\n

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

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

\n\t\t\tImplacable in her intolerant strength<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tVast like the surge in a tired swimmer’s ears,<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tDeath missioned to the night his lethal call.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tEntombing the vanity of life’s desires.<\/p>\n

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tHopest thou still always to last and love?”<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tThe voice of Night that knew and Death that thought.<\/p>\n

In her beginningless infinity<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThrough her soul’s reaches unconfined she gazed;<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\t“Although thou hast survived the unborn void<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tThe nothing dreamed existence and delays<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tThat have not even his privilege of mind,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tAnd guide its giant stumblings through the void,<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tHis mortality vexing with the immortal’s dreams,<\/p>\n

Troubling his transience with the infinite’s breath,<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tReturn to thy body’s shell, thy tie to earth,<\/p>\n

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

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tChoose a life’s hopes for thy deceiving prize.”<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tUnendingly there rose in Savitri,<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

“I bow not to thee, O huge mask of death,<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tUnslain I have survived the clutch of Night.<\/p>\n

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tInto the hardness of a statued soul.<\/p>\n

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

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

Against the vast refusal of the world.<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tAnd win the soul’s wish from earth’s inconscient Force.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tMy husband, waking in the forest’s charm<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\t“Indulgent to the dreams my touch shall break,<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tKingdom and power and friends and greatness lost<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tThe pallid pomps of man’s declining days,<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tTo one who wiser grew by adverse Fate,<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tTo impersonal nothingness’s bare sublime.<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tOpen at last on thee their marble eyes.”<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\t“World-spirit, I was thy equal spirit born.<\/p>\n

My will too is a law, my strength a god.<\/p>\n

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

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

\n\t\t\tOf the unchanging marble hierarchies<\/p>\n

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

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tInto earth’s flowering spaces Satyavan<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tTo do with him my spirit’s burning will.<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tI will follow with him earth’s path that leads to God.<\/p>\n

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

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

Travelling together the immense unknown.<\/p>\n

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

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

\n\t\t\tOr unimaginable stupendous dawn<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tWherever thou leadst his soul I shall pursue.”<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tInsisting on the immutable Decree,<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tRemembering all the joy its waves have drowned,<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tAgainst the Woman’s boundless heart arose<\/p>\n

The almighty cry of universal Death.<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tTurn nor attempt forbidden happy fields<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tLest in their sombre shrines thy tread awake<\/p>\n

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tThe Unknown’s lightnings start and, terrified,<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tA wounded and forsaken soul thou flee<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tNor many lives exhaust the tireless Wrath<\/p>\n

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

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

Clasping in thy heart thy fate’s exiguous dole<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDepart in peace, if peace for man is just.”<\/p>\n

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tContemptuously creating worlds disdained,<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tNot he who has reared his temple in my thoughts<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tMy God is will and triumphs in his paths,<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tA traveller of the million roads of life,<\/p>\n

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tLove’s golden wings have power to fan thy void:<\/p>\n

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tHe shall remake thy universe, O Death.”<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tWhile still they travelled through the trackless night<\/p>\n

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tIn that unreal journey through blind Nought;<\/p>\n

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tThis is thy body’s sweetest lure of bliss,<\/p>\n

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tAnd, a vain oneness seeking, to embrace<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tThe Gods to whom man prays can help not man;<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tReflected in him by illusion’s power.<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tThou calledst me to wrestle with thy soul,<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tBut if there were a Being witnessing all,<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tIf thou desirest immortality,<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tLive in thyself; forget the man thou lov’st.<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tThen shalt thou rise into thy unmoved source.”<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\t“O Death, who reasonest, I reason not,<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tConsenting to the impermanence of things.”<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\t“When I have loved for ever, I shall know.<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tFor all his suns were conscient in my birth,<\/p>\n

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

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tDowered with a mind and heart to conquer thee.”<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tSure of his empire and his armoured might,<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\tHalf-seen in clouds appeared a sombre face;<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tThe ashes of the pyre his forehead’s sign.<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

END OF<\/font>
\n\t\t\tBOOK<\/font> NINE<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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<\/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 stood…<\/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-2453","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\/2453","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=2453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}