Savitri Book 11 Canto 1 - The Eternal Day: The Soul's Choice and the Supreme Consummation
A marvellous sun looked down from ecstasy’s skies On worlds of deathless bliss, perfection’s home.... ||148.1|| God’s everlasting day surrounded her, Domains appearedof sempiternal light Invading all Nature with the Absolute’s joy. ||148.2||
Arisen beneath a triple mystic heaven The seven immortal earths were seen sublime: Homes of the blest released from death and sleep Where grief can never come nor any pang.... ||148.10||
Eternal mountains ridge on gleaming ridge Whose lines were graved as on a sapphire plate And etched the borders of heaven’s lustrous noon Climbed like piled temple stairs and from their heads Of topless meditation heard below The approach of a blue pilgrim multitude And listened to a great arriving voice Of the wide travel hymn of timeless seas. ||148.15||
In cities cut like gems of conscious stone And wonderful pastures and on gleaming coasts Bright forms were seen, eternity’s luminous tribes. ||148.19|| Above her rhythming godheads whirled the spheres, Rapt mobile fixities here blindly sought By the huge erring orbits of our stars. ||148.20||
Immortal harmonies filled her listening ear; A great spontaneous utterance of the heights On titan wings of rhythmic grandeur borne, Poured from some deep spiritual heart of sound Strains trembling with the secrets of the gods. ||148.24||
In the harmony of an original sight... She saw all Nature marvellous without fault. ||148.29||
Endless aspired the climbing of those heavens; Realm upon realm received her soaring view.... ||148.38|| Immune she beheld the strong immortals’ seats Who live for a celestial joy and rule The middle regions of the unfading Ray. ||148.39|| Great forms of deities sat in deathless tiers, Eyes of an unborn gaze towards her leaned Through a transparency of crystal fire. ||148.40||
The golden-bosomed Apsara goddesses... Whirled linked in moonlit revels of the heart.... ||148.41|| Wind-haired Gundhurvas chanted to the ear The odes that shape the universal thought, The lines that tear the veil from Deity’s face, The rhythms that bring the sounds of wisdom’s sea. ||148.42||
Worlds of an infinite reach crowned Nature’s stir.... ||148.46|| Sunlight the soul’s vision and moonlight its dream.... ||148.50|| Into those heights her spirit went floating up.... ||148.52||
A secret splendour rose revealed to sight Where once the vast embodied Void had stood. ||149.4|| Night the dim mask had grown a wonderful face. ||149.5|| The vague infinity was slain whose gloom Had outlined from the terrible Unknown The obscure disastrous figure of a god.... ||149.6||
As if the choric calyx of a flower Aerial, visible on music’s waves, A lotus of light-petalled ecstasy Took shape out of the tremulous heart of things.... ||149.8|| Death’s sombre cowl was cast from Nature’s brow; There lightened on her the godhead’s lurking love. ||149.11|| All grace and glory and all divinity Were here collected in a single form; All worshipped eyes looked through his from one face; He bore all godheads in his grandiose limbs. ||149.12||
In him the fourfold Being bore its crown That wears the mystery of a nameless Name... ||149.14|| Spirit and seer and thinker of things seen, Virât, who lights his camp-fires in the suns And the star-entangled ether is his hold, Expressed himself with Matter for his speech.... ||149.15||
In him shadows his form the Golden Child Who in the Sun-capped Vast cradles his birth: Hiranyagarbha, author of thoughts and dream.... ||149.17|| Armed with the golden speech, the diamond eye, His is the vision and the prophecy.... ||149.18||
A third spirit stood behind, their hidden cause, A mass of superconscience closed in light, Creator of things in his all-knowing sleep.... ||149.19|| His slumber is an Almightiness in things, Awake, he is the Eternal and Supreme. ||149.23||
Above was the brooding bliss of the Infinite, Its omniscient and omnipotent repose, Its immobile silence absolute and alone. ||149.24||
He seemed the wideness of a boundless sky, He seemed the passion of a sorrowless earth, He seemed the burning of a world-wide sun. ||149.34|| Two looked upon each other, Soul saw Soul. ||149.35||
Then like an anthem from the heart’s lucent cave A voice soared up whose magic sound could turn The poignant weeping of the earth to sobs Of rapture and her cry to spirit song.... ||150.1|| A smile came rippling out in her wide eyes.... ||151.2||
Then with a smile august as noonday heavens The godhead of the vision wonderful: How shall earth-nature and man’s nature rise To the celestial levels, yet earth abide?... ||152.1|| O Flame, withdraw into thy luminous self Or else return to thy original might On a seer-summit above thought and world... ||152.28|| But Savitri answered to the radiant God: In vain thou temptst with solitary bliss Two spirits saved out of a suffering world... ||153.1|| Since God has made earth, earth must make in her God; What hides within her breast she must reveal. ||153.9||
But the god answered to the woman’s heart: “O living power of the incarnate Word... ||153.14|| Arise upon a ladder of greater worlds To the infinity where no world can be.... ||153.20|| Ascend, O soul, into thy timeless self; Choose destiny’s curve and stamp thy will on Time.” ||153.26||
In an ineffable world she lived fulfilled. ||153.30|| An energy of the triune Infinite, In a measureless Reality she dwelt.... ||153.31||
Around her some tremendous spirit lived, Mysterious flame around a melting pearl, And in the phantom of abolished Space There was a voice unheard by ears that cried: “Choose, spirit, thy supreme choice not given again... ||153.36|| Accept, O music, weariness of thy notes, O stream, wide breaking of thy channel banks....” ||153.38|| And silently the woman’s heart replied: Thy peace, O Lord, a boon within to keep Amid the roar and ruin of wild Time For the magnificent soul of man on earth. ||153.41||
Limitless like ocean round a lonely isle A second time the eternal cry arose: Wide open are the ineffable gates in front.... ||153.43|| Immeasurably the woman’s nature spoke: Thy oneness, Lord, in many approaching hearts.... ||153.46|| A third time swelled the great admonishing call: I spread abroad the refuge of my wings.... ||153.47|| A sob of things was answer to the voice, And passionately the woman’s heart replied: “Thy energy, Lord, to seize on woman and man, To take all things and creatures in their grief And gather them into a mother’s arms.” ||153.49||
Solemn and distant like a seraph’s lyre A last great time the warning sound was heard: I open the wide eye of solitude To uncover the voiceless rapture of my bliss.... ||153.50|| Then all the woman yearningly replied: “Thy embrace which rends the living knot of pain, Thy joy, O Lord, in which all creatures breathe, Thy magic flowing waters of deep love, Thy sweetness give to me for earth and men.” ||153.51||
Then after silence a still blissful cry... O beautiful body of the incarnate Word, Thy thoughts are mine, I have spoken with thy voice. ||154.1|| My will is thine, what thou hast chosen I choose. ||154.2|| All thou hast asked I give to earth and men.... ||154.3|| Now will I do in thee my marvellous works.... ||154.7|| O Sun-Word, thou shalt raise the earth-soul to Light And bring down God into the lives of men... ||154.10|| Summing in thy single soul my mystic world I will possess in thee my universe, The universe find all I am in thee. ||154.17||
Who hunts and seizes me, my captive grows: This shalt thou henceforth learn from thy heart-beats. ||154.40|| For ever love, O beautiful slave of God! ||154.41|| O lasso of my rapture’s widening noose, Become my cord of universal love. ||154.42||
Descend to life with him thy heart desires. ||155.1|| O Satyavan, O luminous Savitri, I sent you forth of old beneath the stars, A dual power of God in an ignorant world, In a hedged creation shut from limitless self, Bringing down God to the insentient glow, Lifting earth-beings to immortality. ||155.2||
There is an infinite truth, an absolute power. ||155.16|| The Spirit’s mightiness shall cast off its mask; Its greatness shall be felt shaping the world’s course. ||155.17|| It shall be seen in its own veilless beams, A star rising from the Inconscient’s night, A sun climbing to Supernature’s peak. ||155.18||
All then shall change, a magic order come Overtopping this mechanical universe. ||155.37|| A mightier race shall inhabit the mortal’s world. ||155.38|| On Nature’s luminous tops, on the Spirit’s ground, The superman shall reign as king of life... ||155.39||
But first high Truth must set her feet on earth And man aspire to the Eternal’s light And all his members feel the Spirit’s touch And all his life obey an inner Force. ||155.52|| This too shall be; for a new life shall come... ||155.53|| Nature shall live to manifest secret God, The Spirit shall take up the human play, This earthly life become the life divine.” ||155.71||
The measure of that subtle music ceased. ||156.1|| Down with a hurried swimming floating lapse Through unseen worlds and bottomless spaces forced Sank like a star the soul of Savitri. ||156.2||
Pursuing her in her fall, implacably sweet, A face was over her which seemed a youth’s, Symbol of all the beauty eyes see not, Crowned as with peacock plumes of gorgeous hue Framing a sapphire, whose heart-disturbing smile Insatiably attracted to delight, Voluptuous to the embraces of her soul. ||156.6||
Changed in its shape, yet rapturously the same, It grew a woman’s dark and beautiful Like a mooned night with drifting star-gemmed clouds, A shadowy glory and a stormy depth, Turbulent in will and terrible in love. ||156.7|| Eyes in which Nature’s blind ecstatic life Sprang from some spirit’s passionate content, Missioned her to the whirling dance of earth. ||156.8||
She kept within her strong embosoming soul Like a flower hidden in the heart of spring The soul of Satyavan drawn down by her Inextricably in that mighty lapse. ||156.9|| Invisible heavens in a thronging flight Soared past her as she fell. Then all the blind And near attraction of the earth compelled Fearful rapidities of downward bliss. ||156.10||
Then from a timeless plane that watches Time, A Spirit gazed out upon destiny... ||156.12|| The prophet moment covered limitless space And cast into the heart of hurrying Time A diamond light of the Eternal’s peace, A crimson seed of God’s felicity; A glance from the gaze fell of undying Love. ||156.14||
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