{"id":501,"date":"2013-07-13T01:28:24","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:28:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=501"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:28:24","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:28:24","slug":"02-book-1-canto-01-the-symbol-dawn-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\/02-book-1-canto-01-the-symbol-dawn-vol-28-savitri-volume-28","title":{"rendered":"-02_Book 1 Canto 01 The Symbol Dawn.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nPART ONE<\/span><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\n
\n(<\/font><\/span>Books  I\u2013III<\/span><\/font>)<\/span><\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nBook One<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nThe Book of Beginnings<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n

 <\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n
\n

 Canto One<\/i> <\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe Symbol Dawn<\/font><\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It was the hour before the Gods awake.<\/p>\n

Across the path of the divine Event<\/p>\n

The huge foreboding mind of Night, alone<\/p>\n

In her unlit temple of eternity,<\/p>\n

Lay stretched immobile upon Silence’ marge.<\/p>\n

Almost one felt, opaque, impenetrable,<\/p>\n

In the sombre symbol of her eyeless muse<\/p>\n

The abysm of the unbodied Infinite;<\/p>\n

A fathomless zero occupied the world.<\/p>\n

A power of fallen boundless self awake<\/p>\n

Between the first and the last Nothingness,<\/p>\n

Recalling the tenebrous womb from which it came,<\/p>\n

Turned from the insoluble mystery of birth<\/p>\n

And the tardy process of mortality<\/p>\n

And longed to reach its end in vacant Nought.<\/p>\n

As in a dark beginning of all things,<\/p>\n

A mute featureless semblance of the Unknown<\/p>\n

Repeating for ever the unconscious act,<\/p>\n

Prolonging for ever the unseeing will,<\/p>\n

Cradled the cosmic drowse of ignorant Force<\/p>\n

Whose moved creative slumber kindles the suns<\/p>\n

And carries our lives in its somnambulist whirl.<\/p>\n

Athwart the vain enormous trance of Space,<\/p>\n

Its formless stupor without mind or life,<\/p>\n

A shadow spinning through a soulless Void,<\/p>\n

Thrown back once more into unthinking dreams,<\/p>\n

Earth wheeled abandoned in the hollow gulfs<\/p>\n

Forgetful of her spirit and her fate.<\/p>\n

The impassive skies were neutral, empty, still.<\/p>\n

Then something in the inscrutable darkness stirred;<\/p>\n

A nameless movement, an unthought Idea <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 1<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Insistent, dissatisfied, without an aim,<\/p>\n

Something that wished but knew not how to be,<\/p>\n

Teased the Inconscient to wake Ignorance.<\/p>\n

A throe that came and left a quivering trace,<\/p>\n

Gave room for an old tired want unfilled,<\/p>\n

At peace in its subconscient moonless cave<\/p>\n

To raise its head and look for absent light,<\/p>\n

Straining closed eyes of vanished memory,<\/p>\n

Like one who searches for a bygone self<\/p>\n

And only meets the corpse of his desire.<\/p>\n

It was as though even in this Nought\u2019s profound,<\/p>\n

Even in this ultimate dissolution’s core
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

There lurked an unremembering entity,<\/p>\n

Survivor of a slain and buried past<\/p>\n

Condemned to resume the effort and the pang,<\/p>\n

Reviving in another frustrate world.<\/p>\n

An unshaped consciousness desired light<\/p>\n

And a blank prescience yearned towards distant change.<\/p>\n

As if a childlike finger laid on a cheek<\/p>\n

Reminded of the endless need in things<\/p>\n

The heedless Mother of the universe,<\/p>\n

An infant longing clutched the sombre Vast.<\/p>\n

Insensibly somewhere a breach began:<\/p>\n

A long lone line of hesitating hue<\/p>\n

Like a vague smile tempting a desert heart<\/p>\n

Troubled the far rim of life’s obscure sleep.<\/p>\n

Arrived from the other side of boundlessness<\/p>\n

An eye of deity pierced through the dumb deeps;<\/p>\n

A scout in a reconnaissance from the sun,<\/p>\n

It seemed amid a heavy cosmic rest,<\/p>\n

The torpor of a sick and weary world,<\/p>\n

To seek for a spirit sole and desolate<\/p>\n

Too fallen to recollect forgotten bliss.<\/p>\n

Intervening in a mindless universe,<\/p>\n

Its message crept through the reluctant hush<\/p>\n

Calling the adventure of consciousness and joy <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 2<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

And, conquering Nature’s disillusioned breast,<\/p>\n

Compelled renewed consent to see and feel.<\/p>\n

A thought was sown in the unsounded Void,<\/p>\n

A sense was born within the darkness’ depths,<\/p>\n

A memory quivered in the heart of Time<\/p>\n

As if a soul long dead were moved to live:<\/p>\n

But the oblivion that succeeds the fall,<\/p>\n

Had blotted the crowded tablets of the past,<\/p>\n

And all that was destroyed must be rebuilt<\/p>\n

And old experience laboured out once more.<\/p>\n

All can be done if the
\nGod-touch is there.<\/p>\n

A hope stole in that hardly dared to be<\/p>\n

Amid the Night’s forlorn indifference.<\/p>\n

As if solicited in an alien world<\/p>\n

With timid and hazardous instinctive grace,<\/p>\n

Orphaned and driven out to seek a home,<\/p>\n

An errant marvel with no place to live,<\/p>\n

Into a far-off nook of heaven there came<\/p>\n

A slow miraculous gesture’s dim appeal.<\/p>\n

The persistent thrill of a transfiguring touch<\/p>\n

Persuaded the inert black quietude<\/p>\n

And beauty and wonder disturbed the fields of God.<\/p>\n

A wandering hand of pale enchanted light<\/p>\n

That glowed along a fading moment’s brink,<\/p>\n

Fixed with gold panel and opalescent hinge<\/p>\n

A gate of dreams ajar on mystery’s verge.<\/p>\n

One lucent corner windowing hidden things<\/p>\n

Forced the world’s blind immensity to sight.<\/p>\n

The darkness failed and slipped like a falling cloak<\/p>\n

From the reclining body of a god.<\/p>\n

Then through the pallid rift that seemed at first<\/p>\n

Hardly enough for a trickle from the suns,<\/p>\n

Outpoured the revelation and the flame.<\/p>\n

The brief perpetual sign recurred above.<\/p>\n

A glamour from the unreached transcendences<\/p>\n

Iridescent with the glory of the Unseen, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 3<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

A message from the unknown immortal Light<\/p>\n

Ablaze upon creation’s quivering edge,<\/p>\n

Dawn built her aura of magnificent hues<\/p>\n

And buried its seed of grandeur in the hours.<\/p>\n

An instant’s visitor
\nthe godhead shone:<\/p>\n

On life’s thin border awhile the Vision stood<\/p>\n

And bent over earth’s pondering forehead curve.<\/p>\n

Interpreting a recondite beauty and bliss<\/p>\n

In colour’s hieroglyphs of mystic sense,<\/p>\n

It wrote the lines of a significant myth<\/p>\n

Telling of a greatness of spiritual dawns,<\/p>\n

A brilliant code penned with the sky for page.<\/p>\n

Almost that day the epiphany was disclosed<\/p>\n

Of which our thoughts and hopes are signal flares;<\/p>\n

A lonely splendour from the invisible goal<\/p>\n

Almost was flung on the opaque Inane.<\/p>\n

Once more a tread perturbed the vacant Vasts;<\/p>\n

Infinity’s centre, a Face of rapturous calm<\/p>\n

Parted the eternal lids that open heaven;<\/p>\n

A Form from far beatitudes seemed to near.<\/p>\n

Ambassadress twixt eternity and change,<\/p>\n

The omniscient Goddess leaned across the breadths<\/p>\n

That wrap the fated journeyings of the stars<\/p>\n

And saw the spaces ready for her feet.<\/p>\n

Once she half looked behind for her veiled sun,<\/p>\n

Then, thoughtful, went to her immortal work.<\/p>\n

Earth felt the Imperishable’s passage close:<\/p>\n

The waking ear of Nature heard her steps<\/p>\n

And wideness turned to her its limitless eye,<\/p>\n

And, scattered on sealed depths, her luminous smile<\/p>\n

Kindled to fire the silence of the worlds.<\/p>\n

All grew a consecration and a rite.<\/p>\n

Air was a vibrant link between earth and heaven;<\/p>\n

The wide-winged hymn of a great priestly wind<\/p>\n

Arose and failed upon the altar hills;<\/p>\n

The high boughs prayed in a revealing sky. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 4<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Here where our half-lit ignorance skirts the gulfs<\/p>\n

On the dumb bosom of the ambiguous earth,<\/p>\n

Here where one knows not even the step in front<\/p>\n

And Truth has her throne on the shadowy back of doubt,<\/p>\n

On this anguished and precarious field of toil<\/p>\n

Outspread beneath some large indifferent gaze,<\/p>\n

Impartial witness to our joy and bale,<\/p>\n

Our prostrate soil bore the awakening ray.<\/p>\n

Here too the vision and prophetic gleam<\/p>\n

Lit into miracles common meaningless shapes;<\/p>\n

Then the divine afflatus, spent, withdrew,<\/p>\n

Unwanted, fading from the mortal’s range.<\/p>\n

A sacred yearning lingered in its trace,<\/p>\n

The worship of a Presence and a Power<\/p>\n

Too perfect to be held by death-bound hearts,<\/p>\n

The prescience of a marvellous birth to come.<\/p>\n

Only a little the God-light can stay:<\/p>\n

Spiritual beauty illumining human sight<\/p>\n

Lines with its passion and mystery Matter’s mask<\/p>\n

And squanders eternity on a beat of Time.<\/p>\n

As when a soul draws near the sill of birth,<\/p>\n

Adjoining mortal time to Timelessness,<\/p>\n

A spark of deity lost in Matter’s crypt<\/p>\n

Its lustre vanishes in the inconscient planes,<\/p>\n

That transitory glow of magic fire<\/p>\n

So now dissolved in bright accustomed air.<\/p>\n

The message ceased and waned the messenger.<\/p>\n

The single Call, the uncompanioned Power,<\/p>\n

Drew back into some far-off secret world<\/p>\n

The hue and marvel of the supernal beam:<\/p>\n

She looked no more on our mortality.<\/p>\n

The excess of beauty natural to
\nGod-kind<\/p>\n

Could not uphold its claim on time-born eyes;<\/p>\n

Too mystic-real for space-tenancy<\/p>\n

Her body of glory was expunged from heaven:<\/p>\n

The rarity and wonder lived no more. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 5<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

There was the common light of earthly day.<\/p>\n

Affranchised from the respite of fatigue<\/p>\n

Once more the rumour of the speed of Life<\/p>\n

Pursued the cycles of her blinded quest.<\/p>\n

All sprang to their unvarying daily acts;<\/p>\n

The thousand peoples of the soil and tree<\/p>\n

Obeyed the unforeseeing instant’s urge,<\/p>\n

And, leader here with his uncertain mind,<\/p>\n

Alone who stares at the future’s covered face,<\/p>\n

Man lifted up the burden of his fate.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And Savitri too awoke among these tribes<\/p>\n

That hastened to join the brilliant Summoner’s chant<\/p>\n

And, lured by the beauty of the apparent ways,<\/p>\n

Acclaimed their portion of ephemeral joy.<\/p>\n

Akin to the eternity whence she came,<\/p>\n

No part she took in this small happiness;<\/p>\n

A mighty stranger in the human field,<\/p>\n

The embodied Guest within made no response.<\/p>\n

The call that wakes the leap of human mind,<\/p>\n

Its chequered eager motion of pursuit,<\/p>\n

Its fluttering-hued illusion of desire,<\/p>\n

Visited her heart like a sweet alien note.<\/p>\n

Time’s message of brief light was not for her.<\/p>\n

In her there was the anguish of the gods<\/p>\n

Imprisoned in our transient human mould,<\/p>\n

The deathless conquered by the death of things.<\/p>\n

A vaster Nature’s joy had once been hers,<\/p>\n

But long could keep not its gold heavenly hue<\/p>\n

Or stand upon this brittle earthly base.<\/p>\n

A narrow movement on Time’s deep abysm,<\/p>\n

Life’s fragile littleness denied the power,<\/p>\n

The proud and conscious wideness and the bliss<\/p>\n

She had brought with her into the human form,<\/p>\n

The calm delight that weds one soul to all,<\/p>\n

The key to the flaming doors of ecstasy. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 6<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Earth’s grain that needs the sap of pleasure and tears<\/p>\n

Rejected the undying rapture’s boon:<\/p>\n

Offered to the daughter of infinity<\/p>\n

Her passion-flower of love and doom she gave.<\/p>\n

In vain now seemed the splendid sacrifice.<\/p>\n

A prodigal of her rich divinity,<\/p>\n

Her self and all she was she had lent to men,<\/p>\n

Hoping her greater being to implant<\/p>\n

That heaven might native grow on mortal soil.<\/p>\n

Hard is it to persuade earth-nature’s change;<\/p>\n

Mortality bears ill the eternal’s<\/span>
\ntouch:<\/p>\n

It fears the pure divine intolerance<\/p>\n

Of that assault of ether and of fire;<\/p>\n

It murmurs at its sorrowless<\/span>
\nhappiness,<\/p>\n

Almost with hate repels the light it brings;<\/p>\n

It trembles at its naked power of Truth<\/p>\n

And the might and sweetness of its absolute Voice.<\/p>\n

Inflicting on the heights the abysm’s law,<\/p>\n

It sullies with its mire heaven’s messengers:<\/p>\n

Its thorns of fallen nature are the defence<\/span><\/p>\n

It turns against the saviour<\/span> hands
\nof Grace;<\/p>\n

It meets the sons of God with death and pain.<\/p>\n

A glory of lightnings<\/span> traversing
\nthe earth-scene,<\/p>\n

Their sun-thoughts fading, darkened by ignorant minds,<\/p>\n

Their work betrayed, their good to evil turned,<\/p>\n

The cross their payment for the crown they gave,<\/p>\n

Only they leave behind a splendid Name.<\/p>\n

A fire has come and touched men’s hearts and gone;<\/p>\n

A few have caught flame and risen to greater life.<\/p>\n

Too unlike the world she came to help and save,<\/p>\n

Her greatness weighed upon its ignorant breast,<\/p>\n

And from its deep chasms welled a dire return,<\/p>\n

A portion of its sorrow, struggle, fall.<\/p>\n

To live with grief, to confront death on her road,\u2014<\/p>\n

The mortal’s lot became the Immortal’s share.<\/p>\n

Thus trapped in the gin of earthly destinies, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 7<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Awaiting her ordeal’s hour abode,<\/p>\n

Outcast from her inborn felicity,<\/p>\n

Accepting life’s obscure terrestrial robe,<\/p>\n

Hiding herself even from those she loved,<\/p>\n

The godhead greater by a human fate.<\/p>\n

A dark foreknowledge separated her<\/p>\n

From all of whom she was the star and stay;<\/p>\n

Too great to impart the peril and the pain,<\/p>\n

In her torn depths she kept the grief to come.<\/p>\n

As one who watching over men left blind<\/p>\n

Takes up the load of an unwitting race,<\/p>\n

Harbouring a foe whom with her heart she must feed,<\/p>\n

Unknown her act, unknown the doom she faced,<\/p>\n

Unhelped she must foresee and dread and dare.<\/p>\n

The long-foreknown and fatal morn was here<\/p>\n

Bringing a noon
\nthat seemed like every noon.<\/p>\n

For Nature walks upon her mighty way<\/p>\n

Unheeding when she breaks a soul, a life;<\/p>\n

Leaving her slain behind she travels on:<\/p>\n

Man only marks and God’s all-seeing eyes.<\/p>\n

Even in this moment of her soul’s despair,<\/p>\n

In its grim rendezvous with death and fear,<\/p>\n

No cry broke from her lips, no call for aid;<\/p>\n

She told the secret of her woe to none:<\/p>\n

Calm was her face and courage kept her mute.<\/p>\n

Yet only her outward self suffered and strove;<\/p>\n

Even her humanity was half divine:<\/p>\n

Her spirit opened to the Spirit in all,<\/p>\n

Her nature felt all Nature as its own.<\/p>\n

Apart, living within, all lives she bore;<\/p>\n

Aloof, she carried in herself the world:<\/p>\n

Her dread was one with the great cosmic dread,<\/p>\n

Her strength was founded on the cosmic mights<\/span>;<\/p>\n

The universal Mother’s love was hers.<\/p>\n

Against the evil at life’s afflicted roots,<\/p>\n

Her own calamity its private sign, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 8<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Of her pangs she made a mystic poignant sword.<\/p>\n

A solitary mind, a world-wide heart,<\/p>\n

To the lone Immortal’s unshared work she rose.<\/p>\n

At first life grieved not in her burdened breast:<\/p>\n

On the lap of earth’s original somnolence<\/p>\n

Inert, released into
\nforgetfulness<\/p>\n

Prone it reposed, unconscious on mind’s verge,<\/p>\n

Obtuse and tranquil like the stone and star.<\/p>\n

In a deep cleft of silence twixt two realms<\/p>\n

She lay remote from grief, unsawn<\/span>
\nby care,<\/p>\n

Nothing recalling of the sorrow here.<\/p>\n

Then a slow faint remembrance shadowlike moved,<\/p>\n

And sighing she laid her hand upon her bosom<\/p>\n

And recognised<\/span> the close and
\nlingering ache,<\/p>\n

Deep, quiet, old, made natural to its place,<\/p>\n

But knew not why it was there nor whence it came.<\/p>\n

The Power that kindles mind was still withdrawn:<\/p>\n

Heavy, unwilling were life’s servitors<\/p>\n

Like workers with no wages of delight;<\/p>\n

Sullen, the torch of sense refused to burn;<\/p>\n

The unassisted brain found not its past.<\/p>\n

Only a vague earth-nature held the frame.<\/p>\n

But now she stirred, her life shared the cosmic load.<\/p>\n

At the summons of her body’s voiceless call<\/p>\n

Her strong far-winging spirit travelled<\/span>
\nback,<\/p>\n

Back to the yoke of ignorance and fate,<\/p>\n

Back to the labour and stress of mortal days,<\/p>\n

Lighting a pathway through strange symbol dreams<\/p>\n

Across the ebbing of the seas of sleep.<\/p>\n

Her house of Nature felt an unseen sway,<\/p>\n

Illumined swiftly were life’s darkened rooms,<\/p>\n

And memory’s casements opened on the hours<\/p>\n

And the tired feet of thought approached her doors.<\/p>\n

All came back to her: Earth and Love and Doom,<\/p>\n

The ancient disputants, encircled her<\/p>\n

Like giant figures wrestling in the night: <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 9<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

The godheads from the dim Inconscient born<\/p>\n

Awoke to struggle and the pang divine,<\/p>\n

And in the shadow of her flaming heart,<\/p>\n

At the sombre centre of the dire debate,<\/p>\n

A guardian of the unconsoled<\/span> abyss<\/p>\n

Inheriting the long agony of the globe,<\/p>\n

A stone-still figure of high and godlike Pain<\/p>\n

Stared into space with fixed regardless eyes<\/p>\n

That saw grief’s timeless depths but not life’s goal.<\/p>\n

Afflicted by his harsh divinity,<\/p>\n

Bound to his throne, he waited unappeased<\/p>\n

The daily oblation of her unwept tears.<\/p>\n

All the fierce question of man’s hours relived.<\/p>\n

The sacrifice of suffering and desire<\/p>\n

Earth offers to the immortal Ecstasy<\/p>\n

Began again beneath the eternal Hand.<\/p>\n

Awake she endured the moments’ serried march<\/p>\n

And looked on this green smiling dangerous world,<\/p>\n

And heard the ignorant cry of living things.<\/p>\n

Amid the trivial sounds, the unchanging scene<\/p>\n

Her soul arose confronting Time and Fate.<\/p>\n

Immobile in herself, she gathered force.<\/p>\n

This was the day when Satyavan must die.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

End of Canto One <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 10<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n

\n

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

PART ONE   (Books  I\u2013III)   Book One   The Book of Beginnings      Canto One    The Symbol Dawn    It was the…<\/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-501","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\/501","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=501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}