{"id":2469,"date":"2013-07-13T01:41:50","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:41:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2469"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:41:50","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:41:50","slug":"45-canto-two-the-gospel-of-death-and-vanity-of-the-ideal-vol-33-34-savitri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/33-34-savitri\/45-canto-two-the-gospel-of-death-and-vanity-of-the-ideal-vol-33-34-savitri","title":{"rendered":"-45_Canto Two – The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal<\/font><\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

T<\/font>HEN<\/b> pealed the calm inexorable voice:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAbolishing hope, cancelling life’s golden truths,<\/p>\n

Fatal its accents smote the trembling air.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat lovely world swam thin and frail, most like<\/p>\n

Some pearly evanescent farewell gleam<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOn the faint verge of dusk in moonless eves.<\/p>\n

“Prisoner of Nature, many-visioned spirit,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThought’s creature in the ideal’s realm enjoying<\/p>\n

Thy unsubstantial immortality<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe subtle marvellous mind of man has feigned,<\/p>\n

This is the world from which thy yearnings came.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhen it would build eternity from the dust,<\/p>\n

Man’s thought paints images illusion rounds;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tProphesying glories it shall never see,<\/p>\n

It labours delicately among its dreams.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBehold this fleeing of light-tasselled shapes,<\/p>\n

Aerial raiment of unbodied gods;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA rapture of things that never can be born,<\/p>\n

Hope chants to hope a bright immortal choir;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCloud satisfies cloud, phantom to longing phantom<\/p>\n

Leans sweetly, sweetly is clasped or sweetly chased.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis is the stuff from which the ideal is formed:<\/p>\n

Its builder is thought, its base the heart’s desire,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut nothing real answers to their call.<\/p>\n

The ideal dwells not in heaven, nor on the earth,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA bright delirium of man’s ardour of hope<\/p>\n

Drunk with the wine of its own fantasy.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is a brilliant shadow’s dreamy trail.<\/p>\n

Thy vision’s error builds the azure skies,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThy vision’s error drew the rainbow’s arch;<\/p>\n

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Thy mortal longing made for thee a soul.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis angel in thy body thou callst love,<\/p>\n

Who shapes his wings from thy emotion’s hues,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn a ferment of thy body has been born<\/p>\n

And with the body that housed it it must die.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is a passion of thy yearning cells,<\/p>\n

It is flesh that calls to flesh to serve its lust;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is thy mind that seeks an answering mind<\/p>\n

And dreams awhile that it has found its mate;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is thy life that asks a human prop<\/p>\n

To uphold its weakness lonely in the world<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr feeds its hunger on another’s life.<\/p>\n

A beast of prey that pauses in its prowl,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt crouches under a bush in splendid flower<\/p>\n

To seize a heart and body for its food:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis beast thou dreamst immortal and a god.<\/p>\n

O human mind, vainly thou torturest<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn hour’s delight to stretch through infinity’s<\/p>\n

Long void and fill its formless, passionless gulfs,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPersuading the insensible Abyss<\/p>\n

To lend eternity to perishing things,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd trickst the fragile movements of thy heart<\/p>\n

With thy spirit’s feint of immortality.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll here emerges born from Nothingness;<\/p>\n

Encircled it lasts by the emptiness of Space,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAwhile upheld by an unknowing Force,<\/p>\n

Then crumbles back into its parent Nought:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOnly the mute Alone can for ever be.<\/p>\n

In the Alone there is no room for love.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn vain to clothe love’s perishable mud<\/p>\n

Thou hast woven on the Immortals’ borrowed loom<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe ideal’s gorgeous and unfading robe.<\/p>\n

The ideal never yet was real made.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImprisoned in form that glory cannot live;<\/p>\n

Into a body shut it breathes no more.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIntangible, remote, for ever pure,<\/p>\n

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A sovereign of its own brilliant void,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUnwillingly it descends to earthly air<\/p>\n

To inhabit a white temple in man’s heart:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn his heart it shines rejected by his life.<\/p>\n

Immutable, bodiless, beautiful, grand and dumb,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImmobile on its shining throne it sits;<\/p>\n

Dumb it receives his offering and his prayer.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt has no voice to answer to his call,<\/p>\n

No feet that move, no hands to take his gifts:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAerial statue of the nude Idea,<\/p>\n

Virgin conception of a bodiless god,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts light stirs man the thinker to create<\/p>\n

An earthly semblance of diviner things.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts hued reflection falls upon man’s acts;<\/p>\n

His institutions are its cenotaphs,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe signs his dead conventions with its name;<\/p>\n

His virtues don the Ideal’s skiey robe<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd a nimbus of the outline of its face:<\/p>\n

He hides their littleness with the divine Name.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tYet insufficient is the bright pretence<\/p>\n

To screen their indigent and earthy make:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEarth only is there and not some heavenly source.<\/p>\n

If heavens there are they are veiled in their own light,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIf a Truth eternal somewhere reigns unknown,<\/p>\n

It burns in a tremendous void of God;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor truth shines far from the falsehoods of the world;<\/p>\n

How can the heavens come down to unhappy earth<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr the eternal lodge in drifting time?<\/p>\n

How shall the Ideal tread earth’s dolorous soil<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhere life is only a labour and a hope,<\/p>\n

A child of Matter and by Matter fed,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA fire flaming low in Nature’s grate,<\/p>\n

A wave that breaks upon a shore in Time,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA journey’s toilsome trudge with death for goal?<\/p>\n

The Avatars have lived and died in vain,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tVain was the sage’s thought, the prophet’s voice;<\/p>\n

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In vain is seen the shining upward Way.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEarth lies unchanged beneath the circling sun;<\/p>\n

She loves her fall and no omnipotence<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer mortal imperfections can erase,<\/p>\n

Force on man’s crooked ignorance Heaven’s straight line<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr colonise a world of death with gods.<\/p>\n

O traveller in the chariot of the Sun,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHigh priestess in thy holy fancy’s shrine<\/p>\n

Who with a magic ritual in earth’s house<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWorshippest ideal and eternal love,<\/p>\n

What is this love thy thought has deified,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis sacred legend and immortal myth?<\/p>\n

It is a conscious yearning of thy flesh,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is a glorious burning of thy nerves,<\/p>\n

A rose of dream-splendour petalling thy mind,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA great red rapture and torture of thy heart.<\/p>\n

A sudden transfiguration of thy days,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt passes and the world is as before.<\/p>\n

A ravishing edge of sweetness and of pain,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA thrill in its yearning makes it seem divine,<\/p>\n

A golden bridge across the roar of the years,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA cord tying thee to eternity.<\/p>\n

And yet how brief and frail! how soon is spent<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis treasure wasted by the gods on man,<\/p>\n

This happy closeness as of soul to soul,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis honey of the body’s companionship,<\/p>\n

This heightened joy, this ecstasy in the veins,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis strange illumination of the sense!<\/p>\n

If Satyavan had lived, love would have died;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut Satyavan is dead and love shall live<\/p>\n

A little while in thy sad breast, until<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis face and body fade on memory’s wall<\/p>\n

Where other bodies, other faces come.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhen love breaks suddenly into the life<\/p>\n

At first man steps into a world of the sun;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn his passion he feels his heavenly element:<\/p>\n

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But only a fine sunlit patch of earth<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe marvellous aspect took of heaven’s outburst;<\/p>\n

The snake is there and the worm in the heart of the rose.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA word, a moment’s act can slay the god;<\/p>\n

Precarious is his immortality,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe has a thousand ways to suffer and die.<\/p>\n

Love cannot live by heavenly food alone,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOnly on sap of earth can it survive.<\/p>\n

For thy passion was a sensual want refined,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA hunger of the body and the heart;<\/p>\n

Thy want can tire and cease or turn elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr love may meet a dire and pitiless end<\/p>\n

By bitter treason, or wrath with cruel wounds<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSeparate, or thy unsatisfied will to others<\/p>\n

Depart when first love’s joy lies stripped and slain:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA dull indifference replaces fire<\/p>\n

Or an endearing habit imitates love:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn outward and uneasy union lasts<\/p>\n

Or the routine of a life’s compromise:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhere once the seed of oneness had been cast<\/p>\n

Into a semblance of spiritual ground<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBy a divine adventure of heavenly powers<\/p>\n

Two strive, constant associates without joy,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTwo egos straining in a single leash,<\/p>\n

Two minds divided by their jarring thoughts,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTwo spirits disjoined, for ever separate.<\/p>\n

Thus is the ideal falsified in man’s world;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTrivial or sombre, disillusion comes,<\/p>\n

Life’s harsh reality stares at the soul:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHeaven’s hour adjourned flees into bodiless Time.<\/p>\n

Death saves thee from this and saves Satyavan:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe now is safe, delivered from himself;<\/p>\n

He travels to silence and felicity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCall him not back to the treacheries of earth<\/p>\n

And the poor petty life of animal Man.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn my vast tranquil spaces let him sleep<\/p>\n

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In harmony with the mighty hush of death<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhere love lies slumbering on the breast of peace.<\/p>\n

And thou, go back alone to thy frail world:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tChastise thy heart with knowledge, unhood to see,<\/p>\n

Thy nature raised into clear living heights,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe heaven-bird’s view from unimagined peaks.<\/p>\n

For when thou givest thy spirit to a dream<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSoon hard necessity will smite thee awake:<\/p>\n

Purest delight began and it must end.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThou too shalt know, thy heart no anchor swinging,<\/p>\n

Thy cradled soul moored in eternal seas.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tVain are the cycles of thy brilliant mind.<\/p>\n

Renounce, forgetting joy and hope and tears,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThy passionate nature in the bosom profound<\/p>\n

Of a happy Nothingness and worldless Calm,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDelivered into my mysterious rest.<\/p>\n

One with my fathomless Nihil all forget.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tForget thy fruitless spirit’s waste of force,<\/p>\n

Forget the weary circle of thy birth,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tForget the joy and the struggle and the pain,<\/p>\n

The vague spiritual quest which first began<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhen worlds broke forth like clusters of fire-flowers,<\/p>\n

And great burning thoughts voyaged through the sky of mind<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd Time and its aeons crawled across the vasts<\/p>\n

And souls emerged into mortality.”<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut Savitri replied to the dark Power:<\/p>\n

“A dangerous music now thou findst, O Death,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMelting thy speech into harmonious pain,<\/p>\n

And flut’st alluringly to tired hopes<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThy falsehoods mingled with sad strains of truth.<\/p>\n

But I forbid thy voice to slay my soul.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMy love is not a hunger of the heart,<\/p>\n

My love is not a craving of the flesh;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt came to me from God, to God returns.<\/p>\n

Even in all that life and man have marred,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA whisper of divinity still is heard,<\/p>\n

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A breath is felt from the eternal spheres.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAllowed by Heaven and wonderful to man<\/p>\n

A sweet fire-rhythm of passion chants to love.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere is a hope in its wild infinite cry;<\/p>\n

It rings with callings from forgotten heights,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd when its strains are hushed to high-winged souls<\/p>\n

In their empyrean, its burning breath<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSurvives beyond, the rapturous core of suns<\/p>\n

That flame for ever pure in skies unseen,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA voice of the eternal Ecstasy.<\/p>\n

One day I shall behold my great sweet world<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPut off the dire disguises of the gods,<\/p>\n

Unveil from terror and disrobe from sin.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAppeased we shall draw near our mother’s face,<\/p>\n

We shall cast our candid souls upon her lap;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThen shall we clasp the ecstasy we chase,<\/p>\n

Then shall we shudder with the long-sought god,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThen shall we find Heaven’s unexpected strain.<\/p>\n

Not only is there hope for godheads pure;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe violent and darkened deities<\/p>\n

Leaped down from the one breast in rage to find<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhat the white gods had missed: they too are safe;<\/p>\n

A mother’s eyes are on them and her arms<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tStretched out in love desire her rebel sons.<\/p>\n

One who came love and lover and beloved<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEternal, built himself a wondrous field<\/p>\n

And wove the measures of a marvellous dance.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere in its circles and its magic turns<\/p>\n

Attracted he arrives, repelled he flees.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the wild devious promptings of his mind<\/p>\n

He tastes the honey of tears and puts off joy<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tRepenting, and has laughter and has wrath,<\/p>\n

And both are a broken music of the soul<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhich seeks out reconciled its heavenly rhyme.<\/p>\n

Ever he comes to us across the years<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBearing a new sweet face that is the old.<\/p>\n

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His bliss laughs to us or it calls concealed<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLike a far-heard unseen entrancing flute<\/p>\n

From moonlit branches in the throbbing woods,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTempting our angry search and passionate pain.<\/p>\n

Disguised the Lover seeks and draws our souls.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe named himself for me, grew Satyavan.<\/p>\n

For we were man and woman from the first,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe twin souls born from one undying fire.<\/p>\n

Did he not dawn on me in other stars?<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHow has he through the thickets of the world<\/p>\n

Pursued me like a lion in the night<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd come upon me suddenly in the ways<\/p>\n

And seized me with his glorious golden leap!<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUnsatisfied he yearned for me through time,<\/p>\n

Sometimes with wrath and sometimes with sweet peace<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDesiring me since first the world began.<\/p>\n

He rose like a wild wave out of the floods<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd dragged me helpless into seas of bliss.<\/p>\n

Out of my curtained past his arms arrive;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThey have touched me like the soft persuading wind,<\/p>\n

They have plucked me like a glad and trembling flower,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd clasped me happily burned in ruthless flame.<\/p>\n

I too have found him charmed in lovely forms<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd run delighted to his distant voice<\/p>\n

And pressed to him past many dreadful bars.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIf there is a yet happier greater god,<\/p>\n

Let him first wear the face of Satyavan<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd let his soul be one with him I love;<\/p>\n

So let him seek me that I may desire.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor only one heart beats within my breast<\/p>\n

And one god sits there throned. Advance, O Death,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBeyond the phantom beauty of this world;<\/p>\n

For of its citizens I am not one.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tI cherish God the Fire, not God the Dream.”<\/p>\n

But Death once more inflicted on her heart<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe majesty of his calm and dreadful voice:<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t“A bright hallucination are thy thoughts.<\/p>\n

A prisoner haled by a spiritual cord,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOf thy own sensuous will the ardent slave,<\/p>\n

Thou sendest eagle-poised to meet the sun<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWords winged with the red splendour of thy heart.<\/p>\n

But knowledge dwells not in the passionate heart;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe heart’s words fall back unheard from Wisdom’s throne.<\/p>\n

Vain is thy longing to build heaven on earth.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tArtificer of Ideal and Idea,<\/p>\n

Mind, child of Matter in the womb of Life,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo higher levels persuades his parents’ steps:<\/p>\n

Inapt, they follow ill the daring guide.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut Mind, a glorious traveller in the sky,<\/p>\n

Walks lamely on the earth with footsteps slow;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHardly he can mould the life’s rebellious stuff,<\/p>\n

Hardly can he hold the galloping hooves of sense:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis thoughts look straight into the very heavens;<\/p>\n

They draw their gold from a celestial mine,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis acts work painfully a common ore.<\/p>\n

All thy high dreams were made by Matter’s mind<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo solace its dull work in Matter’s jail,<\/p>\n

Its only house where it alone seems true.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA solid image of reality<\/p>\n

Carved out of being to prop the works of Time,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMatter on the firm earth sits strong and sure.<\/p>\n

It is the first-born of created things,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt stands the last when mind and life are slain,<\/p>\n

And if it ended all would cease to be.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll else is only its outcome or its phase:<\/p>\n

Thy soul is a brief flower by the gardener Mind<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCreated in thy matter’s terrain plot;<\/p>\n

It perishes with the plant on which it grows,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor from earth’s sap it draws its heavenly hue:<\/p>\n

Thy thoughts are gleams that pass on Matter’s verge,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThy life a lapsing wave on Matter’s sea.<\/p>\n

A careful steward of Truth’s limited means,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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Treasuring her founded facts from the squandering Power,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt tethers mind to the tent-posts of sense,<\/p>\n

To a leaden grey routine clamps Life’s caprice<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd ties all creatures with the cords of Law.<\/p>\n

A vessel of transmuting alchemies,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA glue that sticks together mind and life,<\/p>\n

If Matter fails, all crumbling cracks and falls.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll upon Matter stands as on a rock.<\/p>\n

Yet this security and guarantor<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPressed for credentials an impostor proves:<\/p>\n

A cheat of substance where no substance is,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn appearance and a symbol and a nought,<\/p>\n

Its forms have no original right to birth:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts aspect of a fixed stability<\/p>\n

Is the cover of a captive motion’s swirl,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn order of the steps of Energy’s dance<\/p>\n

Whose footmarks leave for ever the same signs,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA concrete face of unsubstantial Time,<\/p>\n

A trickle dotting the emptiness of Space:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA stable-seeming movement without change,<\/p>\n

Yet change arrives and the last change is death.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhat seemed most real once, is Nihil’s show.<\/p>\n

Its figures are snares that trap and prison the sense;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe beginningless Void was its artificer:<\/p>\n

Nothing is there but aspects limned by Chance<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd seeming shapes of seeming Energy.<\/p>\n

All by Death’s mercy breathe and live awhile,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll think and act by the Inconscient’s grace.<\/p>\n

Addict of the roseate luxury of thy thoughts,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTurn not thy gaze within thyself to look<\/p>\n

At visions in the gleaming crystal, Mind,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tClose not thy lids to dream the forms of Gods.<\/p>\n

At last to open thy eyes consent and see<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe stuff of which thou and the world are made.<\/p>\n

Inconscient in the dumb inconscient Void<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInexplicably a moving world sprang forth:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>616<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Awhile secure, happily insensible,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt could not rest content with its own truth.<\/p>\n

For something on its nescient breast was born<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCondemned to see and know, to feel and love,<\/p>\n

It watched its acts, imagined a soul within;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt groped for truth and dreamed of Self and God.<\/p>\n

When all unconscious was, then all was well.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tI, Death, was king and kept my regal state,<\/p>\n

Designing my unwilled, unerring plan,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCreating with a calm insentient heart.<\/p>\n

In my sovereign power of unreality<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tObliging nothingness to take a form,<\/p>\n

Infallibly my blind unthinking force<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMaking by chance a fixity like fate’s,<\/p>\n

By whim the formulas of Necessity,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFounded on the hollow ground of the Inane<\/p>\n

The sure bizarrerie of Nature’s scheme.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tI curved the vacant ether into Space;<\/p>\n

A huge expanding and contracting Breath<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHarboured the fires of the universe:<\/p>\n

I struck out the supreme original spark<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd spread its sparse ranked armies through the Inane,<\/p>\n

Manufactured the stars from the occult radiances,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMarshalled the platoons of the invisible dance;<\/p>\n

I formed earth’s beauty out of atom and gas,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd built from chemic plasm the living man.<\/p>\n

Then Thought came in and spoiled the harmonious world:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMatter began to hope and think and feel,<\/p>\n

Tissue and nerve bore joy and agony.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe inconscient cosmos strove to learn its task;<\/p>\n

An ignorant personal God was born in Mind<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd to understand invented reason’s law,<\/p>\n

The impersonal Vast throbbed back to man’s desire,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA trouble rocked the great world’s blind still heart<\/p>\n

And Nature lost her wide immortal calm.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThus came this warped incomprehensible scene<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>617<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Of souls emmeshed in life’s delight and pain<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd Matter’s sleep and Mind’s mortality,<\/p>\n

Of beings in Nature’s prison waiting death<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd consciousness left in seeking ignorance<\/p>\n

And evolution’s slow arrested plan.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis is the world in which thou mov’st, astray<\/p>\n

In the tangled pathways of the human mind,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the issueless circling of thy human life,<\/p>\n

Searching for thy soul and thinking God is here.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut where is room for soul or place for God<\/p>\n

In the brute immensity of a machine?<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA transient Breath thou takest for thy soul,<\/p>\n

Born from a gas, a plasm, a sperm, a gene,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA magnified image of man’s mind for God,<\/p>\n

A shadow of thyself thrown upon Space.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInterposed between the upper and nether Void,<\/p>\n

Thy consciousness reflects the world around<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the distorting mirror of Ignorance<\/p>\n

Or upwards turns to catch imagined stars.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr if a half-Truth is playing with the earth<\/p>\n

Throwing its light on a dark shadowy ground,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt touches only and leaves a luminous smudge.<\/p>\n

Immortality thou claimest for thy spirit,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut immortality for imperfect man,<\/p>\n

A god who hurts himself at every step,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWould be a cycle of eternal pain.<\/p>\n

Wisdom and love thou claimest as thy right;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut knowledge in this world is error’s mate,<\/p>\n

A brilliant procuress of Nescience,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd human love a posturer on earth-stage<\/p>\n

Who imitates with verve a faery dance.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn extract pressed from hard experience,<\/p>\n

Man’s knowledge casked in the barrels of Memory<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHas the harsh savour of a mortal draught:<\/p>\n

A sweet secretion from the erotic glands<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFlattering and torturing the burning nerves,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>618<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Love is a honey and poison in the breast<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDrunk by it as the nectar of the gods.<\/p>\n

Earth’s human wisdom is no great-browed power,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd love no gleaming angel from the skies;<\/p>\n

If they aspire beyond earth’s dullard air,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tArriving sunwards with frail waxen wings,<\/p>\n

How high could reach that forced unnatural flight?<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut not on earth can divine wisdom reign<\/p>\n

And not on earth can divine love be found;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHeaven-born, only in heaven can they live;<\/p>\n

Or else there too perhaps they are shining dreams.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNay, is not all thou art and doest a dream?<\/p>\n

Thy mind and life are tricks of Matter’s force.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIf thy mind seems to thee a radiant sun,<\/p>\n

If thy life runs a swift and glorious stream,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis is the illusion of thy mortal heart<\/p>\n

Dazzled by a ray of happiness or light.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImpotent to live by their own right divine,<\/p>\n

Convinced of their brilliant unreality,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhen their supporting ground is cut away,<\/p>\n

These children of Matter into Matter die.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEven Matter vanishes into Energy’s vague<\/p>\n

And Energy is a motion of old Nought.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHow shall the Ideal’s unsubstantial hues<\/p>\n

Be painted stiff on earth’s vermilion blur,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA dream within a dream come doubly true?<\/p>\n

How shall the will-o’-the-wisp become a star?<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Ideal is a malady of thy mind,<\/p>\n

A bright delirium of thy speech and thought,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA strange wine of beauty lifting thee to false sight.<\/p>\n

A noble fiction of thy yearnings made,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThy human imperfection it must share:<\/p>\n

Its forms in Nature disappoint the heart,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd never shall it find its heavenly shape<\/p>\n

And never can it be fulfilled in Time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tO soul misled by the splendour of thy thoughts,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>619<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

O earthly creature with thy dream of heaven,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tObey, resigned and still, the earthly law.<\/p>\n

Accept the brief light that falls upon thy days;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTake what thou canst of Life’s permitted joy;<\/p>\n

Submitting to the ordeal of fate’s scourge<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSuffer what thou must of toil and grief and care.<\/p>\n

There shall approach silencing thy passionate heart<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMy long calm night of everlasting sleep:<\/p>\n

There into the hush from which thou cam’st retire.”<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>620<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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

  Canto Two   The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal   THEN pealed the calm inexorable voice: Abolishing hope, cancelling life’s golden…<\/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-2469","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\/2469","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=2469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2469\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}