{"id":490,"date":"2013-07-13T01:28:19","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:28:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=490"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:28:19","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:28:19","slug":"25-book-3-canto-04-the-vision-and-the-boon-vol-28-savitri-volume-28","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/28-savitri-volume-28\/25-book-3-canto-04-the-vision-and-the-boon-vol-28-savitri-volume-28","title":{"rendered":"-25_Book 3 Canto 04 The Vision and the Boon.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
 <\/td>\n\n
\n

\nCanto Four<\/i> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe Vision and the Boon<\/font><\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Then suddenly there rose a sacred stir.<\/p>\n

Amid the lifeless silence of the Void<\/p>\n

In a solitude and an immensity<\/p>\n

A sound came quivering like a loved footfall<\/p>\n

Heard in the listening spaces of the soul;<\/p>\n

A touch perturbed his fibres<\/span> with
\ndelight.<\/p>\n

An influence had approached the mortal range,<\/p>\n

A boundless Heart was near his longing heart,<\/p>\n

A mystic Form enveloped his earthly shape.<\/p>\n

All at her contact broke from silence’ seal;<\/p>\n

Spirit and body thrilled identified,<\/p>\n

Linked in the grasp of an unspoken joy;<\/p>\n

Mind, members, life were merged in ecstasy.<\/p>\n

Intoxicated as with nectarous rain<\/p>\n

His nature’s passioning<\/span>
\nstretches flowed to her<\/p>\n

Flashing with lightnings<\/span>, mad with
\nluminous wine.<\/p>\n

All was a limitless sea that heaved to the moon.<\/p>\n

A divinising<\/span> stream possessed his
\nveins,<\/p>\n

His body’s cells awoke to spirit sense,<\/p>\n

Each nerve became a burning thread of joy:<\/p>\n

Tissue and flesh partook beatitude.<\/p>\n

Alight, the dun unplumbed subconscient<\/span>
\ncaves<\/p>\n

Thrilled with the prescience of her longed-for tread<\/p>\n

And filled with flickering crests and praying tongues.<\/p>\n

Even lost in slumber, mute, inanimate<\/p>\n

His very body answered to her power.<\/p>\n

The One he worshipped was within him now:<\/p>\n

Flame-pure, ethereal
\ntressed<\/span>, a
\nmighty Face<\/p>\n

Appeared and lips moved by immortal words;<\/p>\n

Lids, wisdom’s leaves, drooped over rapture’s orbs.<\/p>\n

A marble monument of ponderings, shone <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 334<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

A forehead, sight’s crypt, and large like ocean’s gaze<\/p>\n

Towards Heaven two tranquil eyes of boundless thought<\/p>\n

Looked into man’s and saw the god to come.<\/p>\n

A shape was seen on threshold Mind, a Voice<\/p>\n

Absolute and wise in the heart’s chambers spoke:<\/p>\n

\u201cO Son of Strength who climbst<\/span>
\ncreation’s peaks,<\/p>\n

No soul is thy companion in the light;<\/p>\n

Alone thou standest<\/span> at the eternal
\ndoors.<\/p>\n

What thou hast won is thine<\/span>, but
\nask no more.<\/p>\n

O Spirit aspiring in an ignorant frame,<\/p>\n

O Voice arisen from the Inconscient’s<\/span>
\nworld,<\/p>\n

How shalt thou speak for men whose hearts are dumb,<\/p>\n

Make purblind earth the soul’s seer-vision’s home<\/p>\n

Or lighten the burden of the senseless globe?<\/p>\n

I am the Mystery beyond reach of mind,<\/p>\n

I am the goal of the travail of the suns;<\/p>\n

My fire and sweetness are the cause of life.<\/p>\n

But too immense my danger and my joy.<\/p>\n

Awake not the immeasurable descent,<\/p>\n

Speak not my secret name to hostile Time;<\/p>\n

Man is too weak to bear the Infinite’s<\/span>
\nweight.<\/p>\n

Truth born too soon might break the imperfect earth.<\/p>\n

Leave the all-seeing Power to hew its way:<\/p>\n

In thy single vast achievement reign apart<\/p>\n

Helping the world with thy great lonely days.<\/p>\n

I ask thee not to merge thy heart of flame<\/p>\n

In the Immobile’s<\/span> wide uncaring
\nbliss,<\/p>\n

Turned from the fruitless motion of the years,<\/p>\n

Deserting the fierce labour of the worlds,<\/p>\n

Aloof from beings, lost in the Alone.<\/p>\n

How shall thy mighty spirit brook repose<\/p>\n

While Death is still unconquered on the earth<\/p>\n

And Time a field of suffering and pain?<\/p>\n

Thy soul was born to share the laden Force;<\/p>\n

Obey thy nature and fulfil thy fate:<\/p>\n

Accept the difficulty and godlike toil, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 335<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

For the slow-paced omniscient purpose live.<\/p>\n

The Enigma’s knot is tied in human kind.<\/p>\n

A lightning from the heights that think and plan,<\/p>\n

Ploughing<\/span> the air of life with
\nvanishing trails,<\/p>\n

Man, sole awake in an unconscious world,<\/p>\n

Aspires in vain to change the cosmic dream.<\/p>\n

Arrived from some half-luminous Beyond<\/p>\n

He is a stranger in the mindless vasts<\/span>;<\/p>\n

A traveller<\/span> in his oft-shifting
\nhome<\/p>\n

Amid the tread of many infinitudes,<\/p>\n

He has pitched a tent of life in desert Space.<\/p>\n

Heaven’s fixed regard beholds him from above,<\/p>\n

In the house of Nature a perturbing guest,<\/p>\n

A voyager twixt Thought’s inconstant shores,<\/p>\n

A hunter of unknown and beautiful Powers,<\/p>\n

A nomad of the far mysterious Light,<\/p>\n

In the wide ways a little spark of God.<\/p>\n

Against his spirit all is in dire league,<\/p>\n

A Titan influence stops his Godward<\/span>
\ngaze.<\/p>\n

Around him hungers the unpitying Void,<\/p>\n

The eternal Darkness seeks him with her hands,<\/p>\n

Inscrutable Energies drive him and deceive,<\/p>\n

Immense implacable deities oppose.<\/p>\n

An inert Soul and a somnambulist Force<\/p>\n

Have made a world estranged from life and thought;<\/p>\n

The Dragon of the dark foundations keeps<\/p>\n

Unalterable the law of Chance and Death;<\/p>\n

On his long way through Time and Circumstance<\/p>\n

The grey-hued riddling nether shadow-Sphinx,<\/p>\n

Her dreadful paws upon the swallowing sands,<\/p>\n

Awaits him armed with the soul-slaying word:<\/p>\n

Across his path sits the dim camp of Night.<\/p>\n

His day is a moment in perpetual Time;<\/p>\n

He is the prey of the minutes and the hours.<\/p>\n

Assailed on earth and unassured<\/span> of
\nheaven,<\/p>\n

Descended here unhappy and sublime, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 336<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

A link between the demigod and the beast,<\/p>\n

He knows not his own greatness nor his aim;<\/p>\n

He has forgotten why
\nhe has come and whence;<\/p>\n

His spirit and his members are at war;<\/p>\n

His heights break off too low to reach the skies,<\/p>\n

His mass is buried in the animal mire.<\/p>\n

A strange antinomy is his nature’s rule.<\/p>\n

A riddle of opposites is made his field:<\/p>\n

Freedom he asks but needs to live in bonds,<\/p>\n

He has need of darkness to perceive some light<\/p>\n

And need of grief to feel a little bliss;<\/p>\n

He has need of death to find a greater life.<\/p>\n

All sides he sees and turns to every call;<\/p>\n

He has no certain light by which to walk;<\/p>\n

His life is a blind-man’s-buff, a hide and seek;<\/p>\n

He seeks himself and from himself he runs;<\/p>\n

Meeting himself, he thinks it other than he.<\/p>\n

Always he builds, but finds no constant ground,<\/p>\n

Always he journeys, but nowhere arrives;<\/p>\n

He would guide the world, himself he cannot guide;<\/p>\n

He would save his soul, his life he cannot save.<\/p>\n

The light his soul has brought his mind has lost;<\/p>\n

All he has learned is soon again in doubt;<\/p>\n

A sun to him seems the shadow of his thoughts,<\/p>\n

Then all is shadow again and nothing
\nis true:<\/p>\n

Unknowing what he does or whither he tends<\/p>\n

He fabricates signs of the Real in Ignorance.<\/p>\n

He has hitched his mortal error to Truth’s star.<\/p>\n

Wisdom attracts him with her luminous masks,<\/p>\n

But never has he seen the face behind:<\/p>\n

A giant Ignorance surrounds his lore.<\/p>\n

Assigned to meet the cosmic mystery<\/p>\n

In the dumb figure of a material world,<\/p>\n

His passport of entry false and his personage,<\/p>\n

He is compelled to be what he is not;<\/p>\n

He obeys the Inconscience he has come to rule <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 337<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

And sinks in Matter to fulfil his soul.<\/p>\n

Awakened from her lower driven forms<\/p>\n

The Earth-Mother gave her forces to his hands<\/p>\n

And painfully he guards the heavy trust;<\/p>\n

His mind is a lost torch-bearer on her roads.<\/p>\n

Illumining breath to think and plasm<\/span>
\nto feel,<\/p>\n

He labours<\/span> with his slow and sceptic<\/span> brain<\/p>\n

Helped by the reason’s vacillating fires,<\/p>\n

To make his thought and will a magic door<\/p>\n

For knowledge to enter the darkness of the world<\/p>\n

And love to rule a realm of strife and hate.<\/p>\n

A mind impotent to reconcile heaven and earth<\/p>\n

And tied to Matter with a thousand bonds,<\/p>\n

He lifts himself to be a conscious god.<\/p>\n

Even when a glory of wisdom crowns his brow,<\/p>\n

When mind and spirit shed a grandiose ray<\/p>\n

To exalt this product of the sperm and gene,<\/p>\n

This alchemist’s miracle from plasm<\/span>
\nand gas,<\/p>\n

And he who shared the animal’s run and crawl<\/p>\n

Lifts his thought-stature to the Immortal’s heights,<\/p>\n

His life still keeps the human middle way;<\/p>\n

His body he resigns to death and pain,<\/p>\n

Abandoning Matter, his too heavy charge.<\/p>\n

A thaumaturge<\/span> sceptic<\/span>
\nof miracles,<\/p>\n

A spirit left sterile of its occult power<\/p>\n

By an unbelieving
\nbrain and credulous heart<\/p>\n

He leaves the world to end where it began:<\/p>\n

His work unfinished he claims a heavenly prize.<\/p>\n

Thus has he missed creation’s absolute.<\/p>\n

Halfway he stops his star of destiny:<\/p>\n

A vast and vain long-tried experiment,<\/p>\n

An ill-served high conception doubtfully done,<\/p>\n

The world’s life falters on not seeing its goal,\u2014<\/p>\n

A zigzag towards unknown dangerous ground<\/p>\n

Ever repeating its habitual walk,<\/p>\n

Ever retreating after marches long <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 338<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

And hardiest victories without sure result,<\/p>\n

Drawn endlessly an inconclusive game.<\/p>\n

In an ill-fitting and voluminous robe<\/p>\n

A radiant purpose still conceals its face,<\/p>\n

A mighty blindness stumbles hoping on,<\/p>\n

Feeding its strength on gifts of luminous Chance.<\/p>\n

Because the human instrument has failed,<\/p>\n

The Godhead frustrate sleeps within its seed,<\/p>\n

A spirit entangled in the forms it made.<\/p>\n

His failure is not failure whom God leads;<\/p>\n

Through all the slow mysterious march goes on:<\/p>\n

An immutable Power has made this mutable world;<\/p>\n

A self-fulfilling transcendence treads man’s road;<\/p>\n

The driver of the soul upon its path,<\/p>\n

It knows its steps, its way is inevitable,<\/p>\n

And how shall the end be vain when God is guide?<\/p>\n

However man’s mind may tire or fail his flesh,<\/p>\n

A will prevails cancelling<\/span> his
\nconscious choice:<\/p>\n

The goal recedes, a bourneless<\/span>
\nvastness calls<\/p>\n

Retreating into an immense Unknown;<\/p>\n

There is no end to the world’s stupendous march,<\/p>\n

There is no rest for the embodied soul.<\/p>\n

It must live on, describe all Time’s huge curve.<\/p>\n

An Influx presses from the closed Beyond<\/p>\n

Forbidding to him rest and earthly ease,<\/p>\n

Till he has found himself he cannot pause.<\/p>\n

A Light there is that leads, a Power that aids;<\/p>\n

Unmarked, unfelt it sees in him and acts:<\/p>\n

Ignorant, he forms the All-conscient<\/span>
\nin his depths,<\/p>\n

Human, looks up to superhuman peaks:<\/p>\n

A borrower of Supernature’s<\/span> gold,<\/p>\n

He paves his road to Immortality.<\/p>\n

The high gods look on man and watch and choose<\/p>\n

Today’s impossibles<\/span> for the
\nfuture’s base.<\/p>\n

His transience trembles with the Eternal’s<\/span>
\ntouch,<\/p>\n

His barriers cede beneath the Infinite’s<\/span>
\ntread; <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 339<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

The Immortals have their entries in his life:<\/p>\n

The Ambassadors of
\nthe Unseen draw near;<\/p>\n

A
\nSplendour<\/span> sullied by the mortal
\nair,<\/p>\n

Love passes through
\nhis heart, a wandering guest,<\/p>\n

Beauty surrounds him for a magic hour,<\/p>\n

He has visits of a large revealing joy,<\/p>\n

Brief widenesses<\/span> release him from
\nhimself,<\/p>\n

Enticing towards a glory ever in front<\/p>\n

Hopes of a deathless sweetness lure and leave.<\/p>\n

His mind is crossed by strange discovering fires,<\/p>\n

Rare intimations lift his stumbling speech<\/p>\n

To a moment’s kinship with the eternal Word;<\/p>\n

A masque of wisdom circles through his brain<\/p>\n

Perturbing him with glimpses half-divine.<\/p>\n

He lays his hands sometimes on the Unknown;<\/p>\n

He communes sometimes with Eternity.<\/p>\n

A strange and grandiose symbol was his birth<\/p>\n

And immortality and spirit-room<\/p>\n

And pure perfection and a shadowless<\/span>
\nbliss<\/p>\n

Are this afflicted creature’s mighty fate.<\/p>\n

In him the Earth-Mother sees draw near the change<\/p>\n

Foreshadowed in her dumb and fiery depths,<\/p>\n

A godhead drawn from her transmuted limbs,<\/p>\n

An alchemy of Heaven on Nature’s base.<\/p>\n

Adept of the self-born unfailing line,<\/p>\n

Leave not the light to die the ages bore,<\/p>\n

Help still humanity’s blind and suffering life:<\/p>\n

Obey thy spirit’s wide omnipotent urge.<\/p>\n

A witness to God’s parley with the Night,<\/p>\n

It leaned compassionate from immortal calm<\/p>\n

And housed desire, the troubled seed of things.<\/p>\n

Assent to thy high self, create, endure.<\/p>\n

Cease not from
\nknowledge, let thy toil be vast,<\/p>\n

No more in earthly limits pen thy force;<\/p>\n

Equal thy work with long unending Time’s.<\/p>\n

Traveller upon the bare eternal heights, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 340<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Tread still the difficult and dateless path<\/p>\n

Joining the cycles with its austere curve<\/p>\n

Measured for man by the initiate Gods.<\/p>\n

My light shall be in thee, my strength thy force.<\/p>\n

Let not the impatient Titan drive thy heart,<\/p>\n

Ask not the imperfect fruit, the partial prize.<\/p>\n

Only one boon, to greaten thy spirit, demand;<\/p>\n

Only one joy, to raise thy kind, desire.<\/p>\n

Above blind fate and the antagonist powers<\/p>\n

Moveless<\/span> there stands a high unchanging
\nWill;<\/p>\n

To its omnipotence leave thy work’s result.<\/p>\n

All things shall change in God’s transfiguring hour.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

August and sweet sank hushed that mighty Voice.<\/p>\n

Nothing now moved in the vast brooding space:<\/p>\n

A stillness came upon the listening world,<\/p>\n

A mute immensity of the Eternal’s<\/span>
\npeace.<\/p>\n

But Aswapathy’s<\/span> heart replied to
\nher,<\/p>\n

A cry amid the silence of the Vasts<\/span>:<\/p>\n

\u201cHow shall I rest content with mortal days<\/p>\n

And the dull measure of terrestrial things,<\/p>\n

I who have seen behind the cosmic mask<\/p>\n

The glory and the beauty of thy face?<\/p>\n

Hard is the doom to which thou bindst<\/span>
\nthy sons!<\/p>\n

How long shall our spirits battle with the Night<\/p>\n

And bear defeat and the brute yoke of Death,<\/p>\n

We who are vessels of a deathless Force<\/p>\n

And builders of the godhead of the race?<\/p>\n

Or if it is thy work I do below<\/p>\n

Amid the error and waste of human life<\/p>\n

In the vague light of man’s half-conscious mind,<\/p>\n

Why breaks not in some distant gleam of thee?<\/p>\n

Ever the centuries and millenniums pass.<\/p>\n

Where in the greyness<\/span> is thy
\ncoming’s ray?<\/p>\n

Where is the thunder of thy victory’s wings?<\/p>\n

Only we hear the feet of passing gods. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 341<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

A plan in the occult eternal Mind<\/p>\n

Mapped out to backward and prophetic sight,<\/p>\n

The aeons<\/span> ever repeat their
\nchangeless round,<\/p>\n

The cycles all rebuild and ever aspire.<\/p>\n

All we have done is ever still to do.<\/p>\n

All breaks and all renews and is the same.<\/p>\n

Huge revolutions of life’s fruitless gyre,<\/p>\n

The new-born ages perish like the old,<\/p>\n

As if the sad Enigma kept its right<\/p>\n

Till all is done for which this scene was made.<\/p>\n

Too little the strength that now with us is born,<\/p>\n

Too faint the light that steals through Nature’s lids,<\/p>\n

Too scant the joy with which she buys our pain.<\/p>\n

In a brute world that knows not its own sense,<\/p>\n

Thought-racked upon the wheel of birth we live,<\/p>\n

The instruments of an impulse not our own<\/p>\n

Moved to achieve with our heart’s blood for price<\/p>\n

Half-knowledge, half-creations that soon tire.<\/p>\n

A foiled immortal soul in perishing limbs,<\/p>\n

Baffled and beaten back we labour still;<\/p>\n

Annulled, frustrated, spent, we still survive.<\/p>\n

In anguish we labour that from us may rise<\/p>\n

A larger-seeing man with nobler heart,<\/p>\n

A golden vessel of the incarnate Truth,<\/p>\n

The executor of the divine attempt<\/p>\n

Equipped to wear the earthly body of God,<\/p>\n

Communicant and prophet and lover and king.<\/p>\n

I know that thy creation cannot fail:<\/p>\n

For even through the mists of mortal thought<\/p>\n

Infallible are thy mysterious steps,<\/p>\n

And, though Necessity dons the garb of Chance,<\/p>\n

Hidden in the blind shifts of Fate she keeps<\/p>\n

The slow calm logic of Infinity’s pace<\/p>\n

And the inviolate sequence of its will.<\/p>\n

All life is fixed in an ascending scale<\/p>\n

And adamantine is the evolving Law; <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 342<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

In the beginning is prepared the close.<\/p>\n

This strange irrational product of the mire,<\/p>\n

This compromise between the beast and
\nGod,<\/p>\n

Is not the crown of thy miraculous world.<\/p>\n

I know there shall inform the inconscient cells,<\/p>\n

At one with Nature and at height with heaven,<\/p>\n

A spirit vast as the containing sky<\/p>\n

And swept with ecstasy from invisible founts,<\/p>\n

A god come down and greater by the fall.<\/p>\n

A power arose out of my slumber’s cell.<\/p>\n

Abandoning the tardy limp of the hours<\/p>\n

And the inconstant blink of mortal sight,<\/p>\n

There where the Thinker sleeps in too much light<\/p>\n

And intolerant flames the lone all-witnessing Eye<\/p>\n

Hearing the word of Fate from Silence’ heart<\/p>\n

In the endless moment of Eternity,<\/p>\n

It saw from timelessness the works of Time.<\/p>\n

Overpassed<\/span> were the leaden
\nformulas of the Mind,<\/p>\n

Overpowered the obstacle of mortal Space:<\/p>\n

The unfolding Image showed the things to come.<\/p>\n

A giant dance of
\nShiva tore the past,<\/p>\n

There was a thunder as of worlds that fall;<\/p>\n

Earth was o’errun<\/span> with fire and
\nthe roar of Death<\/p>\n

Clamouring<\/span> to slay a world his
\nhunger had made;<\/p>\n

There was a clangour<\/span> of
\nDestruction’s wings:<\/p>\n

The Titan’s battle-cry was in my ears,<\/p>\n

Alarm and rumour shook the armoured<\/span>
\nNight.<\/p>\n

I saw the Omnipotent’s<\/span> flaming
\npioneers<\/p>\n

Over the heavenly verge which turns towards life<\/p>\n

Come crowding down the amber stairs of birth;<\/p>\n

Forerunners of a
\ndivine multitude<\/p>\n

Out of the paths of the morning star they came<\/p>\n

Into the little room of mortal life.<\/p>\n

I saw them cross the twilight of an age,<\/p>\n

The sun-eyed children of a marvellous<\/span>
\ndawn,<\/p>\n

The great creators with wide brows of calm, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 343<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

The massive barrier-breakers of the world<\/p>\n

And wrestlers with destiny in her lists of will,<\/p>\n

The labourers<\/span> in the quarries of the
\ngods,<\/p>\n

The messengers of the Incommunicable,<\/p>\n

The architects of immortality.<\/p>\n

Into the fallen human sphere they came,<\/p>\n

Faces that wore the Immortal’s glory still,<\/p>\n

Voices that communed still with the thoughts of God,<\/p>\n

Bodies made beautiful by the
\nSpirit’s light,<\/p>\n

Carrying the magic word, the mystic fire,<\/p>\n

Carrying the Dionysian cup of joy,<\/p>\n

Approaching eyes of a diviner man,<\/p>\n

Lips chanting an unknown anthem of the soul,<\/p>\n

Feet echoing in the corridors of Time.<\/p>\n

High priests of wisdom, sweetness, might and bliss,<\/p>\n

Discoverers of beauty’s sunlit ways<\/p>\n

And swimmers of Love’s laughing fiery floods<\/p>\n

And dancers within rapture’s golden doors,<\/p>\n

Their tread one day shall change the suffering earth<\/p>\n

And justify the light on Nature’s face.<\/p>\n

Although Fate lingers in the high Beyond<\/p>\n

And the work seems vain on which our heart’s force was
\nspent,<\/p>\n

All shall be done for which our pain was borne.<\/p>\n

Even as of old man came behind the beast<\/p>\n

This high divine successor surely shall come<\/p>\n

Behind man’s inefficient mortal pace,<\/p>\n

Behind his vain labour, sweat and blood and tears:<\/p>\n

He shall know what mortal mind barely durst think,<\/p>\n

He shall do what the heart of the mortal could not dare.<\/p>\n

Inheritor of the toil
\nof human time<\/p>\n

He shall take on him the burden of the gods;<\/p>\n

All heavenly light shall visit the earth’s thoughts,<\/p>\n

The might of heaven shall fortify earthly hearts;<\/p>\n

Earth’s deeds shall touch the superhuman’s<\/span>
\nheight,<\/p>\n

Earth’s seeing widen into the infinite.<\/p>\n

Heavy unchanged weighs still the imperfect world; <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 344<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

The splendid youth of Time has passed and failed;<\/p>\n

Heavy and long are the years our labour counts<\/p>\n

And still the seals are firm upon man’s soul<\/p>\n

And weary is the ancient Mother’s heart.<\/p>\n

O Truth defended in thy secret sun,<\/p>\n

Voice of her mighty musings in shut heavens<\/p>\n

On things withdrawn within her luminous depths,<\/p>\n

O Wisdom-Splendour<\/span>, Mother of the
\nuniverse,<\/p>\n

Creatrix<\/span>, the Eternal’s<\/span>
\nartist Bride,<\/p>\n

Linger not long with thy transmuting hand<\/p>\n

Pressed vainly on one golden bar of Time,<\/p>\n

As if Time dare not open its heart to God.<\/p>\n

O radiant fountain of the world’s delight<\/p>\n

World-free and unattainable above,<\/p>\n

O Bliss who ever dwellst<\/span> deep hid
\nwithin<\/p>\n

While men seek thee outside and never find,<\/p>\n

Mystery and Muse with hieratic tongue,<\/p>\n

Incarnate the white passion of thy force,<\/p>\n

Mission to earth some living form of thee.<\/p>\n

One moment fill with thy eternity,<\/p>\n

Let thy infinity in one body live,<\/p>\n

All-Knowledge wrap one mind in seas of light,<\/p>\n

All-Love throb single in one human heart.<\/p>\n

Immortal, treading the earth with mortal feet<\/p>\n

All heaven’s beauty crowd in earthly limbs!<\/p>\n

Omnipotence, girdle with the power of God<\/p>\n

Movements and moments of a mortal will,<\/p>\n

Pack with the eternal might one human hour<\/p>\n

And with one gesture change all future time.<\/p>\n

Let a great word be spoken from the heights<\/p>\n

And one great act unlock the doors of Fate.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

His prayer sank down in the resisting Night<\/p>\n

Oppressed by the thousand forces that deny,<\/p>\n

As if too weak to climb to the Supreme.<\/p>\n

But there arose a wide consenting Voice; <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 345<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

The spirit of beauty was revealed in sound:<\/p>\n

Light floated round the marvellous<\/span>
\nVision’s brow<\/p>\n

And on her lips the Immortal’s joy took shape.<\/p>\n

\u201cO strong forerunner, I have heard thy cry.<\/p>\n

One shall descend and break the iron Law,<\/p>\n

Change Nature’s doom by the lone
\nSpirit’s power.<\/p>\n

A limitless Mind that can contain the world,<\/p>\n

A sweet and violent heart of ardent calms<\/p>\n

Moved by the passions of the gods shall come.<\/p>\n

All mights<\/span> and greatnesses shall
\njoin in her;<\/p>\n

Beauty shall walk celestial on the earth,<\/p>\n

Delight shall sleep
\nin the cloud-net of her hair<\/p>\n

And in her body as on his homing tree<\/p>\n

Immortal Love shall beat his glorious wings.<\/p>\n

A music of griefless things shall weave her charm;<\/p>\n

The harps of the Perfect shall attune her voice,<\/p>\n

The streams of Heaven shall murmur in her laugh,<\/p>\n

Her lips shall be the honeycombs of God,<\/p>\n

Her limbs his golden jars of ecstasy,<\/p>\n

Her breasts the rapture-flowers of Paradise.<\/p>\n

She shall bear Wisdom in her voiceless bosom,<\/p>\n

Strength shall be with her like a conqueror’s sword<\/p>\n

And from her eyes the Eternal’s<\/span>
\nbliss shall gaze.<\/p>\n

A seed shall be sown in Death’s tremendous hour,<\/p>\n

A branch of heaven transplant to human soil;<\/p>\n

Nature shall overleap her mortal step;<\/p>\n

Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As a flame disappears in endless Light<\/p>\n

Immortally extinguished in its source,<\/p>\n

Vanished the splendour<\/span> and was
\nstilled the word.<\/p>\n

An echo of delight that once was close,<\/p>\n

The harmony journeyed towards some distant hush,<\/p>\n

A music failing in the ear of trance,<\/p>\n

A cadence called by distant cadences,<\/p>\n

A voice that trembled into strains withdrawn. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 346<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Her form retreated from the longing earth<\/p>\n

Forsaking nearness to the abandoned sense,<\/p>\n

Ascending to her unattainable home.<\/p>\n

Lone, brilliant, vacant lay the inner fields;<\/p>\n

All was unfilled inordinate spirit space,<\/p>\n

Indifferent, waste, a desert of bright peace.<\/p>\n

Then a line moved on the far edge of calm:<\/p>\n

The warm-lipped sentient soft terrestrial wave,<\/p>\n

A quick and many-murmured moan and laugh,<\/p>\n

Came gliding in upon white feet of sound.<\/p>\n

Unlocked was the deep glory of Silence’ heart;<\/p>\n

The absolute unmoving stillnesses<\/span><\/p>\n

Surrendered to the breath of mortal air,<\/p>\n

Dissolving boundlessly the heavens of trance<\/p>\n

Collapsed to waking mind. Eternity<\/p>\n

Cast down its incommunicable lids<\/p>\n

Over its solitudes remote from ken<\/p>\n

Behind the voiceless mystery of sleep.<\/p>\n

The grandiose respite failed, the wide release.<\/p>\n

Across the light of fast-receding planes<\/p>\n

That fled from him as from a falling star,<\/p>\n

Compelled to fill his human house in Time<\/p>\n

His soul drew back into the speed and noise<\/p>\n

Of the vast business of created things.<\/p>\n

A chariot of the marvels of the heavens<\/p>\n

Broad-based to bear the gods on fiery wheels,<\/p>\n

Flaming he swept through the spiritual gates.<\/p>\n

The mortal stir received him in its midst.<\/p>\n

Once more he moved amid material scenes,<\/p>\n

Lifted by intimations from the heights<\/p>\n

And twixt the pauses of the building brain<\/p>\n

Touched by the thoughts that skim the fathomless surge<\/p>\n

Of Nature and wing back to hidden shores.<\/p>\n

The eternal seeker in the aeonic<\/span>
\nfield<\/p>\n

Besieged by the intolerant press of hours<\/p>\n

Again was strong for great swift-footed deeds. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 347<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Awake beneath the ignorant vault of Night,<\/p>\n

He saw the unnumbered people of the stars<\/p>\n

And heard the questioning of the unsatisfied flood<\/p>\n

And toiled with the form-maker, measuring Mind.<\/p>\n

A wanderer from the occult invisible suns<\/p>\n

Accomplishing the fate of transient things,<\/p>\n

A god in the figure of the arisen beast,<\/p>\n

He raised his brow of conquest to the heavens<\/p>\n

Establishing the empire of the soul<\/p>\n

On Matter and its bounded universe<\/p>\n

As on a solid rock in infinite seas.<\/p>\n

The Lord of Life resumed his mighty rounds<\/p>\n

In the scant field of the ambiguous globe.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

End of Book
\nThree, Canto Four<\/p>\n

End of Part One <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 348<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n

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

  Canto Four    The Vision and the Boon    Then suddenly there rose a sacred stir. Amid the lifeless silence of the Void In…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-28-savitri-volume-28","wpcat-10-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490","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=490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}