{"id":2487,"date":"2013-07-13T01:41:57","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:41:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2487"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:41:57","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:41:57","slug":"42-canto-one-towards-the-black-void-vol-33-34-savitri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/33-34-savitri\/42-canto-one-towards-the-black-void-vol-33-34-savitri","title":{"rendered":"-42_Canto One – Towards the Black Void.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

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<\/td>\n\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPART THREE<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBOOKS IX \u00ad XII<\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBOOK NINE<\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Book of Eternal Night<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n

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

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTowards the Black Void<\/font><\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

S<\/font>O WAS<\/b> she left alone in the huge wood,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSurrounded by a dim unthinking world,<\/p>\n

Her husband’s corpse on her forsaken breast.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn her vast silent spirit motionless<\/p>\n

She measured not her loss with helpless thoughts,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNor rent with tears the marble seals of pain:<\/p>\n

She rose not yet to face the dreadful god.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOver the body she loved her soul leaned out<\/p>\n

In a great stillness without stir or voice,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs if her mind had died with Satyavan.<\/p>\n

But still the human heart in her beat on.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAware still of his being near to hers,<\/p>\n

Closely she clasped to her the mute lifeless form<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs though to guard the oneness they had been<\/p>\n

And keep the spirit still within its frame.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThen suddenly there came on her the change<\/p>\n

Which in tremendous moments of our lives<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCan overtake sometimes the human soul<\/p>\n

And hold it up towards its luminous source.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe veil is torn, the thinker is no more:<\/p>\n

Only the spirit sees and all is known.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThen a calm Power seated above our brows<\/p>\n

Is seen, unshaken by our thoughts and deeds,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts stillness bears the voices of the world:<\/p>\n

Immobile, it moves Nature, looks on life.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt shapes immutably its far-seen ends;<\/p>\n

Untouched and tranquil amid error and tears<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd measureless above our striving wills,<\/p>\n

Its gaze controls the turbulent whirl of things.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo mate with the Glory it sees, the spirit grows:<\/p>\n

The voice of life is tuned to infinite sounds,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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The moments on great wings of lightning come<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd godlike thoughts surprise the mind of earth.<\/p>\n

Into the soul’s splendour and intensity<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA crescent of miraculous birth is tossed,<\/p>\n

Whose horn of mystery floats in a bright void.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs into a heaven of strength and silence thought<\/p>\n

Is ravished, all this living mortal clay<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIs seized and in a swift and fiery flood<\/p>\n

Of touches shaped by a Harmonist unseen.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA new sight comes, new voices in us form<\/p>\n

A body of the music of the Gods.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImmortal yearnings without name leap down,<\/p>\n

Large quiverings of godhead seeking run<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd weave upon a puissant field of calm<\/p>\n

A high and lonely ecstasy of will.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis in a moment’s depths was born in her.<\/p>\n

Now to the limitless gaze disclosed that sees<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThings barred from human thinking’s earthly lids,<\/p>\n

The Spirit who had hidden in Nature soared<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOut of his luminous nest within the worlds:<\/p>\n

Like a vast fire it climbed the skies of night.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThus were the cords of self-oblivion torn:<\/p>\n

Like one who looks up to far heights she saw,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAncient and strong as on a windless summit<\/p>\n

Above her where she had worked in her lone mind<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLabouring apart in a sole tower of self,<\/p>\n

The source of all which she had seemed or wrought,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA power projected into cosmic space,<\/p>\n

A slow embodiment of the aeonic will,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA starry fragment of the eternal Truth,<\/p>\n

The passionate instrument of an unmoved Power.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA Presence was there that filled the listening world;<\/p>\n

A central All assumed her boundless life.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA sovereignty, a silence and a swiftness,<\/p>\n

One brooded over abysses who was she.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs in a choric robe of unheard sounds<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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A Force descended trailing endless lights;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLinking Time’s seconds to infinity,<\/p>\n

Illimitably it girt the earth and her:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt sank into her soul and she was changed.<\/p>\n

Then like a thought fulfilled by some great word<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat mightiness assumed a symbol form:<\/p>\n

Her being’s spaces quivered with its touch,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt covered her as with immortal wings;<\/p>\n

On its lips the curve of the unuttered Truth,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA halo of Wisdom’s lightnings for its crown,<\/p>\n

It entered the mystic lotus in her head,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA thousand-petalled home of power and light.<\/p>\n

Immortal leader of her mortality,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDoer of her works and fountain of her words,<\/p>\n

Invulnerable by Time, omnipotent,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt stood above her calm, immobile, mute.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll in her mated with that mighty hour,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs if the last remnant had been slain by Death<\/p>\n

Of the humanity that once was hers.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAssuming a spiritual wide control,<\/p>\n

Making life’s sea a mirror of heaven’s sky,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe young divinity in her earthly limbs<\/p>\n

Filled with celestial strength her mortal part.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOver was the haunted pain, the rending fear:<\/p>\n

Her grief had passed away, her mind was still,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer heart beat quietly with a sovereign force.<\/p>\n

There came a freedom from the heart-strings’ clutch,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNow all her acts sprang from a godhead’s calm.<\/p>\n

Calmly she laid upon the forest soil<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe dead who still reposed upon her breast<\/p>\n

And bore to turn away from the dead form:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSole now she rose to meet the dreadful god.<\/p>\n

That mightier spirit turned its mastering gaze<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOn life and things, inheritor of a work<\/p>\n

Left to it unfinished from her halting past,<\/p>\n

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When yet the mind, a passionate learner, toiled<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd ill-shaped instruments were crudely moved.<\/p>\n

Transcended now was the poor human rule;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA sovereign power was there, a godlike will.<\/p>\n

A moment yet she lingered motionless<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd looked down on the dead man at her feet;<\/p>\n

Then like a tree recovering from a wind<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe raised her noble head; fronting her gaze<\/p>\n

Something stood there, unearthly, sombre, grand,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA limitless denial of all being<\/p>\n

That wore the terror and wonder of a shape.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn its appalling eyes the tenebrous Form<\/p>\n

Bore the deep pity of destroying gods;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA sorrowful irony curved the dreadful lips<\/p>\n

That speak the word of doom. Eternal Night<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the dire beauty of an immortal face<\/p>\n

Pitying arose, receiving all that lives<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor ever into its fathomless heart, refuge<\/p>\n

Of creatures from their anguish and world-pain.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis shape was nothingness made real, his limbs<\/p>\n

Were monuments of transience and beneath<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBrows of unwearying calm large godlike lids<\/p>\n

Silent beheld the writhing serpent, life.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUnmoved their timeless wide unchanging gaze<\/p>\n

Had seen the unprofitable cycles pass,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSurvived the passing of unnumbered stars<\/p>\n

And sheltered still the same immutable orbs.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe two opposed each other with their eyes,<\/p>\n

Woman and universal god: around her,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPiling their void unbearable loneliness<\/p>\n

Upon her mighty uncompanioned soul,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMany inhuman solitudes came close.<\/p>\n

Vacant eternities forbidding hope<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLaid upon her their huge and lifeless look,<\/p>\n

And to her ears, silencing earthly sounds,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA sad and formidable voice arose<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tWhich seemed the whole adverse world’s. “Unclasp”, it cried,<\/p>\n

“Thy passionate influence and relax, O slave<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOf Nature, changing tool of changeless Law,<\/p>\n

Who vainly writh’st rebellion to my yoke,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThy elemental grasp; weep and forget.<\/p>\n

Entomb thy passion in its living grave.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLeave now the once-loved spirit’s abandoned robe:<\/p>\n

Pass lonely back to thy vain life on earth.”<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt ceased, she moved not, and it spoke again,<\/p>\n

Lowering its mighty key to human chords, \u2014<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tYet a dread cry behind the uttered sounds,<\/p>\n

Echoing all sadness and immortal scorn,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMoaned like a hunger of far wandering waves.<\/p>\n

“Wilt thou for ever keep thy passionate hold,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThyself a creature doomed like him to pass,<\/p>\n

Denying his soul death’s calm and silent rest?<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tRelax thy grasp; this body is earth’s and thine,<\/p>\n

His spirit now belongs to a greater power.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWoman, thy husband suffers.” Savitri<\/p>\n

Drew back her heart’s force that clasped his body still<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhere from her lap renounced on the smooth grass<\/p>\n

Softly it lay, as often before in sleep<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhen from their couch she rose in the white dawn<\/p>\n

Called by her daily tasks: now too, as if called,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe rose and stood gathered in lonely strength,<\/p>\n

Like one who drops his mantle for a race<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd waits the signal, motionlessly swift.<\/p>\n

She knew not to what course: her spirit above<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOn the crypt-summit of her secret form<\/p>\n

Like one left sentinel on a mountain crest,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA fiery-footed splendour puissant-winged,<\/p>\n

Watched flaming-silent, with her voiceless soul<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLike a still sail upon a windless sea.<\/p>\n

White passionless it rode, an anchored might,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWaiting what far-ridged impulse should arise<\/p>\n

Out of the eternal depths and cast its surge.<\/p>\n

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Then Death the king leaned boundless down, as leans<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNight over tired lands, when evening pales<\/p>\n

And fading gleams break down the horizon’s walls,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNor yet the dusk grows mystic with the moon.<\/p>\n

The dim and awful godhead rose erect<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFrom his brief stooping to his touch on earth,<\/p>\n

And, like a dream that wakes out of a dream,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tForsaking the poor mould of that dead clay,<\/p>\n

Another luminous Satyavan arose,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tStarting upright from the recumbent earth<\/p>\n

As if someone over viewless borders stepped<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEmerging on the edge of unseen worlds.<\/p>\n

In the earth’s day the silent marvel stood<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBetween the mortal woman and the god.<\/p>\n

Such seemed he as if one departed came<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWearing the light of a celestial shape<\/p>\n

Splendidly alien to the mortal air.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe mind sought things long loved and fell back foiled<\/p>\n

From unfamiliar hues, beheld yet longed,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBy the sweet radiant form unsatisfied,<\/p>\n

Incredulous of its too bright hints of heaven;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tToo strange the brilliant phantasm to life’s clasp<\/p>\n

Desiring the warm creations of the earth<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tReared in the ardour of material suns,<\/p>\n

The senses seized in vain a glorious shade:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOnly the spirit knew the spirit still,<\/p>\n

And the heart divined the old loved heart, though changed.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBetween two realms he stood, not wavering,<\/p>\n

But fixed in quiet strong expectancy,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLike one who, sightless, listens for a command.<\/p>\n

So were they immobile on that earthly field,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPowers not of earth, though one in human clay.<\/p>\n

On either side of one two spirits strove;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSilence battled with silence, vast with vast.<\/p>\n

But now the impulse of the Path was felt<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMoving from the Silence that supports the stars<\/p>\n

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To touch the confines of the visible world.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLuminous he moved away; behind him Death<\/p>\n

Went slowly with his noiseless tread, as seen<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn dream-built fields a shadowy herdsman glides<\/p>\n

Behind some wanderer from his voiceless herds,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd Savitri moved behind eternal Death,<\/p>\n

Her mortal pace was equalled with the god’s.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWordless she travelled in her lover’s steps,<\/p>\n

Planting her human feet where his had trod,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInto the perilous silences beyond.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAt first in a blind stress of woods she moved<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWith strange inhuman paces on the soil,<\/p>\n

Journeying as if upon an unseen road.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAround her on the green and imaged earth<\/p>\n

The flickering screen of forests ringed her steps;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts thick luxurious obstacle of boughs<\/p>\n

Besieged her body pressing dimly through<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn a rich realm of whispers palpable,<\/p>\n

And all the murmurous beauty of the leaves<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tRippled around her like an emerald robe.<\/p>\n

But more and more this grew an alien sound,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd her old intimate body seemed to her<\/p>\n

A burden which her being remotely bore.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHerself lived far in some uplifted scene<\/p>\n

Where to the trance-claimed vision of pursuit,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSole presences in a high spaceless dream,<\/p>\n

The luminous spirit glided stilly on<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the great shadow travelled vague behind.<\/p>\n

Still with an amorous crowd of seeking hands<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSoftly entreated by their old desires<\/p>\n

Her senses felt earth’s close and gentle air<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCling round them and in troubled branches knew<\/p>\n

Uncertain treadings of a faint-foot wind:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe bore dim fragrances, far callings touched;<\/p>\n

The wild bird’s voice and its winged rustle came<\/p>\n

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As if a sigh from some forgotten world.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEarth stood aloof, yet near: round her it wove<\/p>\n

Its sweetness and its greenness and delight,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts brilliance suave of well-loved vivid hues,<\/p>\n

Sunlight arriving to its golden noon,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the blue heavens and the caressing soil.<\/p>\n

The ancient mother offered to her child<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer simple world of kind familiar things.<\/p>\n

But now, as if the body’s sensuous hold<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCurbing the godhead of her infinite walk<\/p>\n

Had freed those spirits to their grander road<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAcross some boundary’s intangible bar,<\/p>\n

The silent god grew mighty and remote<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn other spaces, and the soul she loved<\/p>\n

Lost its consenting nearness to her life.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInto a deep and unfamiliar air<\/p>\n

Enormous, windless, without stir or sound<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThey seemed to enlarge away, drawn by some wide<\/p>\n

Pale distance, from the warm control of earth<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd her grown far: now, now they would escape.<\/p>\n

Then flaming from her body’s nest alarmed<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer violent spirit soared at Satyavan.<\/p>\n

Out mid the plunge of heaven-surrounded rocks<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSo in a terror and a wrath divine<\/p>\n

From her eyrie streams against the ascending death,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIndignant at its crouching point of steel,<\/p>\n

A fierce she-eagle threatened in her brood,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBorne on a rush of puissance and a cry,<\/p>\n

Outwinging like a mass of golden fire.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSo on a spirit’s flaming outrush borne<\/p>\n

She crossed the borders of dividing sense;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLike pale discarded sheaths dropped dully down<\/p>\n

Her mortal members fell back from her soul.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA moment of a secret body’s sleep,<\/p>\n

Her trance knew not of sun or earth or world;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThought, time and death were absent from her grasp:<\/p>\n

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She knew not self, forgotten was Savitri.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll was the violent ocean of a will<\/p>\n

Where lived captive to an immense caress,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPossessed in a supreme identity,<\/p>\n

Her aim, joy, origin, Satyavan alone.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer sovereign prisoned in her being’s core,<\/p>\n

He beat there like a rhythmic heart, \u2014 herself<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut different still, one loved, enveloped, clasped,<\/p>\n

A treasure saved from the collapse of space.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAround him nameless, infinite she surged,<\/p>\n

Her spirit fulfilled in his spirit, rich with all Time,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs if Love’s deathless moment had been found,<\/p>\n

A pearl within eternity’s white shell.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThen out of the engulfing sea of trance<\/p>\n

Her mind rose drenched to light streaming with hues<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOf vision and, awake once more to Time,<\/p>\n

Returned to shape the lineaments of things<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd live in borders of the seen and known.<\/p>\n

Onward the three still moved in her soul-scene.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs if pacing through fragments of a dream,<\/p>\n

She seemed to travel on, a visioned shape<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImagining other musers like herself,<\/p>\n

By them imagined in their lonely sleep.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUngrasped, unreal, yet familiar, old,<\/p>\n

Like clefts of unsubstantial memory,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tScenes often traversed, never lived in, fled<\/p>\n

Past her unheeding to forgotten goals.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn voiceless regions they were travellers<\/p>\n

Alone in a new world where souls were not,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut only living moods: a strange hushed weird<\/p>\n

Country was round them, strange far skies above,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA doubting space where dreaming objects lived<\/p>\n

Within themselves their one unchanged idea.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWeird were the grasses, weird the treeless plains;<\/p>\n

Weird ran the road which like fear hastening<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTowards that of which it has most terror, passed<\/p>\n

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Phantasmal between pillared conscious rocks<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSombre and high, gates brooding, whose stone thoughts<\/p>\n

Lost their huge sense beyond in giant night.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEnigma of the Inconscient’s sculptural sleep,<\/p>\n

Symbols of the approach to darkness old<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd monuments of her titanic reign,<\/p>\n

Opening to depths like dumb appalling jaws<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat wait a traveller down a haunted path<\/p>\n

Attracted to a mystery that slays,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThey watched across her road, cruel and still;<\/p>\n

Sentinels they stood of dumb Necessity,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMute heads of vigilant and sullen gloom,<\/p>\n

Carved muzzle of a dim enormous world.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThen, to that chill sere heavy line arrived<\/p>\n

Where his feet touched the shadowy marches’ brink,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTurning arrested luminous Satyavan<\/p>\n

Looked back with his wonderful eyes at Savitri.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut Death pealed forth his vast abysmal cry:<\/p>\n

“O mortal, turn back to thy transient kind;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAspire not to accompany Death to his home,<\/p>\n

As if thy breath could live where Time must die.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThink not thy mind-born passion strength from heaven<\/p>\n

To uplift thy spirit from its earthly base<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd, breaking out from the material cage,<\/p>\n

To upbuoy thy feet of dream in groundless Nought<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd bear thee through the pathless infinite.<\/p>\n

Only in human limits man lives safe.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTrust not in the unreal Lords of Time,<\/p>\n

Immortal deeming this image of thyself<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhich they have built on a Dream’s floating ground.<\/p>\n

Let not the dreadful goddess move thy soul<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo enlarge thy vehement trespass into worlds<\/p>\n

Where it shall perish like a helpless thought.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tKnow the cold term-stones of thy hopes in life.<\/p>\n

Armed vainly with the Ideal’s borrowed might,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDare not to outstep man’s bound and measured force:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>580<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Ignorant and stumbling, in brief boundaries pent,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe crowns himself the world’s mock suzerain,<\/p>\n

Tormenting Nature with the works of Mind.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tO sleeper, dreaming of divinity,<\/p>\n

Wake trembling mid the indifferent silences<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn which thy few weak chords of being die.<\/p>\n

Impermanent creatures, sorrowful foam of Time,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tYour transient loves bind not the eternal gods.”<\/p>\n

The dread voice ebbed in the consenting hush<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhich seemed to close upon it, wide, intense,<\/p>\n

A wordless sanction from the jaws of Night.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Woman answered not. Her high nude soul,<\/p>\n

Stripped of the girdle of mortality,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAgainst fixed destiny and the grooves of law<\/p>\n

Stood up in its sheer will a primal force.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tStill like a statue on its pedestal,<\/p>\n

Lone in the silence and to vastness bared,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAgainst midnight’s dumb abysses piled in front<\/p>\n

A columned shaft of fire and light she rose.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>581<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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

  PART THREE   BOOKS IX \u00ad XII     BOOK NINE   The Book of Eternal Night   Canto One   Towards the Black…<\/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-2487","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\/2487","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=2487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}