{"id":2490,"date":"2013-07-13T01:41:58","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:41:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2490"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:41:58","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:41:58","slug":"44-canto-one-the-dream-twilight-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\/44-canto-one-the-dream-twilight-of-the-ideal-vol-33-34-savitri","title":{"rendered":"-44_Canto One – The Dream Twilight of the Ideal.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Book of the Double Twilight<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n


\nCanto One <\/font><\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Dream Twilight of the Ideal<\/font><\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A<\/font>LL STILL<\/b> was darkness dread and desolate;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere was no change nor any hope of change.<\/p>\n

In this black dream which was a house of Void,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA walk to Nowhere in a land of Nought,<\/p>\n

Ever they drifted without aim or goal;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tGloom led to worse gloom, depth to an emptier depth,<\/p>\n

In some positive Non-being’s purposeless Vast<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThrough formless wastes dumb and unknowable.<\/p>\n

An ineffectual beam of suffering light<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThrough the despairing darkness dogged their steps<\/p>\n

Like the remembrance of a glory lost;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEven while it grew, it seemed unreal there,<\/p>\n

Yet haunted Nihil’s chill stupendous realm,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUnquenchable, perpetual, lonely, null,<\/p>\n

A pallid ghost of some dead eternity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt was as if she must pay now her debt,<\/p>\n

Her vain presumption to exist and think,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo some brilliant Maya that conceived her soul.<\/p>\n

This most she must absolve with endless pangs,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer deep original sin, the will to be<\/p>\n

And the sin last, greatest, the spiritual pride,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat, made of dust, equalled itself with heaven,<\/p>\n

Its scorn of the worm writhing in the mud,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCondemned ephemeral, born from Nature’s dream,<\/p>\n

Refusal of the transient creature’s role,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe claim to be a living fire of God,<\/p>\n

The will to be immortal and divine.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn that tremendous darkness heavy and bare<\/p>\n

She atoned for all since the first act whence sprang<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe error of the consciousness of Time,<\/p>\n

The rending of the Inconscient’s seal of sleep,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>599<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

The primal and unpardoned revolt that broke<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe peace and silence of the Nothingness<\/p>\n

Which was before a seeming universe<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAppeared in a vanity of imagined Space<\/p>\n

And life arose engendering grief and pain:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA great Negation was the Real’s face<\/p>\n

Prohibiting the vain process of Time:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd when there is no world, no creature more,<\/p>\n

When Time’s intrusion has been blotted out,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt shall last, unbodied, saved from thought, at peace.<\/p>\n

Accursed in what had been her godhead source,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCondemned to live for ever empty of bliss,<\/p>\n

Her immortality her chastisement,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer spirit, guilty of being, wandered doomed,<\/p>\n

Moving for ever through eternal Night.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut Maya is a veil of the Absolute;<\/p>\n

A Truth occult has made this mighty world:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Eternal’s wisdom and self-knowledge act<\/p>\n

In ignorant Mind and in the body’s steps.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Inconscient is the Superconscient’s sleep.<\/p>\n

An unintelligible Intelligence<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInvents creation’s paradox profound;<\/p>\n

Spiritual thought is crammed in Matter’s forms,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUnseen it throws out a dumb energy<\/p>\n

And works a miracle by a machine.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll here is a mystery of contraries:<\/p>\n

Darkness a magic of self-hidden Light,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSuffering some secret rapture’s tragic mask<\/p>\n

And death an instrument of perpetual life.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAlthough Death walks beside us on Life’s road,<\/p>\n

A dim bystander at the body’s start<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd a last judgment on man’s futile works,<\/p>\n

Other is the riddle of its ambiguous face:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDeath is a stair, a door, a stumbling stride<\/p>\n

The soul must take to cross from birth to birth,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA grey defeat pregnant with victory,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>600<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

A whip to lash us towards our deathless state.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe inconscient world is the spirit’s self-made room,<\/p>\n

Eternal Night shadow of eternal Day.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNight is not our beginning nor our end;<\/p>\n

She is the dark Mother in whose womb we have hid<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSafe from too swift a waking to world-pain.<\/p>\n

We came to her from a supernal Light,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBy Light we live and to the Light we go.<\/p>\n

Here in this seat of Darkness mute and lone,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the heart of everlasting Nothingness<\/p>\n

Light conquered now even by that feeble beam:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts faint infiltration drilled the blind deaf mass;<\/p>\n

Almost it changed into a glimmering sight<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat housed the phantom of an aureate Sun<\/p>\n

Whose orb pupilled the eye of Nothingness.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA golden fire came in and burned Night’s heart;<\/p>\n

Her dusky mindlessness began to dream;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Inconscient conscious grew, Night felt and thought.<\/p>\n

Assailed in the sovereign emptiness of its reign<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe intolerant Darkness paled and drew apart<\/p>\n

Till only a few black remnants stained that Ray.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut on a failing edge of dumb lost space<\/p>\n

Still a great dragon body sullenly loomed;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAdversary of the slow struggling Dawn<\/p>\n

Defending its ground of tortured mystery,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt trailed its coils through the dead martyred air<\/p>\n

And curving fled down a grey slope of Time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere is a morning twilight of the gods;<\/p>\n

Miraculous from sleep their forms arise<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd God’s long nights are justified by dawn.<\/p>\n

There breaks a passion and splendour of new birth<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd hue-winged visions stray across the lids,<\/p>\n

Heaven’s chanting heralds waken dim-eyed Space.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe dreaming deities look beyond the seen<\/p>\n

And fashion in their thoughts the ideal worlds<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>601<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Sprung from a limitless moment of desire<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat once had lodged in some abysmal heart.<\/p>\n

Passed was the heaviness of the eyeless dark<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd all the sorrow of the night was dead:<\/p>\n

Surprised by a blind joy with groping hands<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLike one who wakes to find his dreams were true,<\/p>\n

Into a happy misty twilit world<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhere all ran after light and joy and love<\/p>\n

She slipped; there far-off raptures drew more close<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd deep anticipations of delight,<\/p>\n

For ever eager to be grasped and held,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWere never grasped, yet breathed strange ecstasy.<\/p>\n

A pearl-winged indistinctness fleeting swam,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn air that dared not suffer too much light.<\/p>\n

Vague fields were there, vague pastures gleamed, vague trees,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tVague scenes dim-hearted in a drifting haze;<\/p>\n

Vague cattle white roamed glimmering through the mist;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tVague spirits wandered with a bodiless cry,<\/p>\n

Vague melodies touched the soul and fled pursued<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInto harmonious distances unseized;<\/p>\n

Forms subtly elusive and half-luminous powers<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWishing no goal for their unearthly course<\/p>\n

Strayed happily through vague ideal lands,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr floated without footing or their walk<\/p>\n

Left steps of reverie on sweet memory’s ground;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr they paced to the mighty measure of their thoughts<\/p>\n

Led by a low far chanting of the gods.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA ripple of gleaming wings crossed the far sky;<\/p>\n

Birds like pale-bosomed imaginations flew<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWith low disturbing voices of desire,<\/p>\n

And half-heard lowings drew the listening ear,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs if the Sun-god’s brilliant kine were there<\/p>\n

Hidden in mist and passing towards the sun.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThese fugitive beings, these elusive shapes<\/p>\n

Were all that claimed the eye and met the soul,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe natural inhabitants of that world.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>602<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

But nothing there was fixed or stayed for long;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNo mortal feet could rest upon that soil,<\/p>\n

No breath of life lingered embodied there.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn that fine chaos joy fled dancing past<\/p>\n

And beauty evaded settled line and form<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd hid its sense in mysteries of hue;<\/p>\n

Yet gladness ever repeated the same notes<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd gave the sense of an enduring world;<\/p>\n

There was a strange consistency of shapes,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the same thoughts were constant passers-by<\/p>\n

And all renewed unendingly its charm<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAlluring ever the expectant heart<\/p>\n

Like music that one always waits to hear,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLike the recurrence of a haunting rhyme.<\/p>\n

One touched incessantly things never seized,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA skirt of worlds invisibly divine.<\/p>\n

As if a trail of disappearing stars<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere showered upon the floating atmosphere<\/p>\n

Colours and lights and evanescent gleams<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat called to follow into a magic heaven,<\/p>\n

And in each cry that fainted on the ear<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere was the voice of an unrealised bliss.<\/p>\n

An adoration reigned in the yearning heart,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA spirit of purity, an elusive presence<\/p>\n

Of faery beauty and ungrasped delight<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhose momentary and escaping thrill,<\/p>\n

However unsubstantial to our flesh,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd brief even in imperishableness,<\/p>\n

Much sweeter seemed than any rapture known<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEarth or all-conquering heaven can ever give.<\/p>\n

Heaven ever young and earth too firm and old<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDelay the heart by immobility:<\/p>\n

Their raptures of creation last too long,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTheir bold formations are too absolute;<\/p>\n

Carved by an anguish of divine endeavour<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThey stand up sculptured on the eternal hills,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>603<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Or quarried from the living rocks of God<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWin immortality by perfect form.<\/p>\n

They are too intimate with eternal things:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tVessels of infinite significances,<\/p>\n

They are too clear, too great, too meaningful;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNo mist or shadow soothes the vanquished sight,<\/p>\n

No soft penumbra of incertitude.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThese only touched a golden hem of bliss,<\/p>\n

The gleaming shoulder of some godlike hope,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe flying feet of exquisite desires.<\/p>\n

On a slow trembling brink between night and day<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThey shone like visitants from the morning star,<\/p>\n

Satisfied beginnings of perfection, first<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTremulous imaginings of a heavenly world:<\/p>\n

They mingle in a passion of pursuit,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThrilled with a spray of joy too slight to tire.<\/p>\n

All in this world was shadowed forth, not limned,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLike faces leaping on a fan of fire<\/p>\n

Or shapes of wonder in a tinted blur,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLike fugitive landscapes painting silver mists.<\/p>\n

Here vision fled back from the sight alarmed,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd sound sought refuge from the ear’s surprise,<\/p>\n

And all experience was a hasty joy.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe joys here snatched were half-forbidden things,<\/p>\n

Timorous soul-bridals delicately veiled<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs when a goddess’ bosom dimly moves<\/p>\n

To first desire and her white soul transfigured,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA glimmering Eden crossed by faery gleams,<\/p>\n

Trembles to expectation’s fiery wand,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut nothing is familiar yet with bliss.<\/p>\n

All things in this fair realm were heavenly strange<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn a fleeting gladness of untired delight,<\/p>\n

In an insistency of magic change.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPast vanishing hedges, hurrying hints of fields,<\/p>\n

Mid swift escaping lanes that fled her feet<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tJourneying she wished no end: as one through clouds<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>604<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tTravels upon a mountain ridge and hears<\/p>\n

Arising to him out of hidden depths<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSound of invisible streams, she walked besieged<\/p>\n

By the illusion of a mystic space,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA charm of bodiless touches felt and heard<\/p>\n

A sweetness as of voices high and dim<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCalling like travellers upon seeking winds<\/p>\n

Melodiously with an alluring cry.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs if a music old yet ever new,<\/p>\n

Moving suggestions on her heart-strings dwelt,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThoughts that no habitation found, yet clung<\/p>\n

With passionate repetition to her mind,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDesires that hurt not, happy only to live<\/p>\n

Always the same and always unfulfilled<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSang in the breast like a celestial lyre.<\/p>\n

Thus all could last yet nothing ever be.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn this beauty as of mind made visible,<\/p>\n

Dressed in its rays of wonder Satyavan<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBefore her seemed the centre of its charm,<\/p>\n

Head of her loveliness of longing dreams<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd captain of the fancies of her soul.<\/p>\n

Even the dreadful majesty of Death’s face<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd its sombre sadness could not darken nor slay<\/p>\n

The intangible lustre of those fleeting skies.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe sombre Shadow sullen, implacable<\/p>\n

Made beauty and laughter more imperative;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEnhanced by his grey, joy grew more bright and dear;<\/p>\n

His dark contrast edging ideal sight<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDeepened unuttered meanings to the heart;<\/p>\n

Pain grew a trembling undertone of bliss<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd transience immortality’s floating hem,<\/p>\n

A moment’s robe in which she looked more fair,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts antithesis sharpening her divinity.<\/p>\n

A comrade of the Ray and Mist and Flame,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBy a moon-bright face a brilliant moment drawn,<\/p>\n

Almost she seemed a thought mid floating thoughts,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>605<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Seen hardly by a visionary mind<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAmid the white inward musings of the soul.<\/p>\n

Half-vanquished by the dream-happiness around,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAwhile she moved on an enchantment’s soil,<\/p>\n

But still remained possessor of her soul.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAbove, her spirit in its mighty trance<\/p>\n

Saw all, but lived for its transcendent task,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImmutable like a fixed eternal star.<\/p>\n

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

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>606<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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

  BOOK TEN   The Book of the Double Twilight   Canto One   The Dream Twilight of the Ideal   ALL STILL was darkness…<\/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-2490","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\/2490","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=2490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2490\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}