Gods and the World

The Book of the Gods

Excerpt from Ilion by Sri Aurobindo

So on the earth the seed that was sown of the centuries ripened;

Europe and Asia, met on their borders, clashed in the Troad.

All over earth men wept and bled and laboured, world-wide

Sowing Fate with their deeds and had other fruit than they hoped for.

Out of desires and their passionate griefs and fleeting enjoyments

Weaving a tapestry fit for the gods to admire, who in silence

Joy, by the cloud and the sunbeam veiled, and men know not their movers.

They in the glens of Olympus, they by the waters of Ida

Or in their temples worshipped in vain or with heart-strings of mortals

Sated their vast desire and enjoying the world and each other

Sported free and unscourged; for the earth was their prey and their playground.

But from his luminous deep domain, from his estate of azure

Zeus looked forth; he beheld the earth in its flowering greenness

Spread like an emerald dream that" the eyes have enthroned in the sunlight,

Heard the symphonies old of the ocean recalling the ages

Lost and dead from its marches salt and unharvested furrows,

Felt in the pregnant hour the unborn hearts of the future.

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Troubled kingdoms of men he beheld, the hind in the furrow,

Lords of the glebe and the serf subdued to the yoke of his fortunes,

Slave-girls tending the fire and herdsmen driving the cattle,

Artisans labouring long for a little hire in men's cities,

Labour long and the meagre reward for a toil that is priceless.

Kings in their seats august or marching swift with their armies

Founded ruthlessly brittle empires. Merchant and toiler

Patiently heaped up our transient wealth like the ants in their hillock.

And to preserve it all, to protect this dust that must perish,

Hurting the eternal soul and maiming heaven for some metal

Judges condemned their brothers to chains and to death and to torment,

Criminals scourgers of crime, for so are these ant-heaps founded, -

Punishing sin by a worse affront to our crucified natures.

All the uncertainty, all the mistaking, all the delusion

Naked were to his gaze; in the moonlit orchards there wandered

Lovers dreaming of love that endures till the moment of treason;

Helped by the anxious joy of their kindred supported their anguish

Women with travail racked for the child who shall rack them with sorrow.

Hopes that were confident, fates that sprang dire from the seed of a moment,

Yearning that claimed all time for its date and all life for its fuel,

All that we wonder at gazing back when the passion has fallen,

Labour blind and vain expense and sacrifice wasted,

These he beheld with a heart unshaken; to each side he studied

Seas of confused attempt and the strife and the din and the crying.

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All things he pierced in us gazing down with his eyelids immortal,

Lids on which sleep dare not settle, the Father of men on his creatures;

Nor by the cloud and the mist was obscured which baffles our eyeballs,

But he distinguished our source and saw to the end of our labour.

He in the animal racked knew the god that is slowly delivered;

Therefore his heart rejoiced. Not alone the mind in its trouble

God beholds, but the spirit behind that has joy of the torture.

Might not our human gaze on the smoke of a furnace, the burning

Red, intolerable, anguish of ore that is fused in the hell-heat,

Shrink and yearn for coolness and peace and condemn all the labour?

Rather look to the purity coming, the steel in its beauty,

Rather rejoice with the master who stands in his gladness accepting

Heat of the glorious god and the fruitful pain of the iron.

Last the eternal gaze was fixed on Troy and the armies

Marching swift to the shock. It beheld the might of Achilles

Helmed and armed, knew all the craft in the brain of Odysseus,

Saw Deiphobus stern in his car and the fates of Aeneas,

Greece of her heroes empty, Troy enringed by her slayers,

Pans a setting star and the beauty of Penthesilea.

These things he saw delighted; the heart that contains all our ages

Blessed our toil and grew full of its fruits, as the Artist eternal

Watched his vehement drama staged twixt the sea and the mountains,

Phrased in the clamour and glitter of arms and closed by the

firebrand, Act itself out in the blood and in passions fierce on the

Troad.

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Yet as a father his children, who sits in the peace of his study

Hearing the noise of his brood and pleased with their play and their quarrels,

So he beheld our mortal race. Then, turned from the armies,

Into his mind he gazed where Time is reflected and, conscient,

Knew the iron knot of our human fates in their warfare.

Calm he arose and left our earth for his limitless kingdoms.

Far from this lower blue and high in the death-scorning spaces

Lifted above mortal mind where Time and Space are but figures

Lightly imagined by Thought divine in her luminous stillness,

Zeus has his palace high and there he has stabled his war-car.

Thence he descends to our mortal realms; where the heights of our mountains

Meet with the divine air, he touches and enters our regions.

Now he ascended back to his natural realms and their rapture,

There where all life is bliss and each feeling an ecstasy mastered.

Thence his eagle Thought with its flashing pinions extended

Winged through the world to the gods, and they came at the call, they ascended

Up from their play and their calm and their works through the infinite azure.

Some from our mortal domains in grove or by far-flowing river

Cool from the winds of the earth or quivering with perishable fragrance

Came, or our laughter they bore and the song of the sea in their paces.

Some from the heavens above us arrived, our vital dominions

Whence we draw breath; for there all things have life, the stone like the ilex,

Clay of those realms like the children of men and the brood of the giants.

There Enceladus groans oppressed and draws strength from his anguish

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Under a living Aetna and flames that have joy of his entrails.

Fiercely he groans and rejoices expecting the end of his foemen

Hastened by every pang and counts long Time by his writhings.

There in the champaigns unending battle the gods and the giants,

There in eternal groves the lovers have pleasure for ever,

There are the faery climes and there are the wonderful pastures.

Some from a marvellous Paradise hundred-realmed in its musings

Million-ecstasied, climbed like flames that in silence aspire

Windless, erect in a motionless dream, yet ascending for ever.

All grew aware of the will divine and grew near to their Father.

Grandiose, calm in her gait, imperious, awing the regions,

Hera came in her pride, the spouse of Zeus and his sister.

As at her birth from the foam of the spaces white Aphrodite

Rose in the cloud of her golden hair like the moon in its halo.

Aegis-bearing Athene, shielded and helmeted, answered

Rushing the call and the heavens thrilled with the joy of her footsteps

Dumbly repeating her name, as insulted and trampled by beauty

Thrill might the soul of a lover and cry out the name of its tyrant.

Others there were as mighty; for Artemis, archeress ancient,

Came on her sandals lightning-tasselled. Up the vast incline

Shaking the world with the force of his advent thundered Poseidon;

Space grew full of his stride and his cry. Immortal Apollo

Shone and his silver clang was heard with alarm in our kingdoms.

Ares' impetuous eyes looked forth from a cloud-drift of splendour;

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Themis' steps appeared and Ananke, the mystic Erinnys;

Nor was Hephaestus' flaming strength from his father divided.

Even the ancient Dis to arrive dim-featured, eternal,

Seemed; but his rays are the shades and his voice is the call of the silence.

Into the courts divine they crowded, radiant, burning,

Perfect in utter grace and light. The joy of their spirits

Calls to eternal Time and the glories of Space are his answer:

Thence were these bright worlds born and persist by the throb of their heart-beats.

Not in the forms that mortals have seen when assisted they scatter

Mists of this earthly dust from their eyes in their moments of greatness

Shone those imaging Powers; nor as in our centuries radiant

Mortal-seeming bodies they wore when they mixed with our nations.

Then the long youth of the world had not faded still out of our natures,

Flowers and the sunlight were felt and the earth was glad like a mother.

Then for a human delight they were masked in this denser vesture

Earth desires for her bliss, thin veils, for the god through them glimmered.

Quick were men's days with the throng of the brilliant presences near them:

Gods from the wood and the valley, gods from the obvious wayside,

Gods on the secret hills leaped out from their light on the mortal.

Oft in the haunt and the grove they met with our kind and their touches

Seized and subjected our clay to the greatness of passions supernal,

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Grasping the earthly virgin and forcing heaven on this death-dust.

Glorifying human beauty Apollo roamed in our regions

Clymene when he pursued or yearned in vain for Marpessa;

Glorifying earth with a human-seeming face of the beauty

Brought from her heavenly climes Aphrodite mixed with Anchises.

Glimpsed in the wilds were the Satyrs, seen in the woodlands the Graces,

Dryad and Naiad in river and forest, Oreads haunting

Glens and the mountain-glades where they played with the manes of our lions

Glimmered on death-claimed eyes; for the gods then were near us and clasped us,

Heaven leaned down in love with our clay and yearned to its transience.

But we have coarsened in heart and in mood; we have turned in our natures

Nearer our poorer kindred; leaned to the ant and the ferret.

Sight we have darkened with sense and power we have stifled with labour,

Likened in mood to the things we gaze at and are in our vestures:

Therefore we toil unhelped; we are left to our weakness and blindness.

Not in those veils now they rose to their skies, but like loose-fitting mantles

Dropped in the vestibules huge of their vigorous realms that besiege us

All that reminded of earth; then clothed with raiment of swiftness

Straight they went quivering up in a glory like fire or the storm-blast.

Even those natural vestures of puissance they leave when they enter

Mind's more subtle fields and agree with its limitless regions

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Peopled by creatures of bliss and forms more true than earth's shadows,

Mind that pure from this density, throned in her splendours immortal

Looks up at Light and suffers bliss from ineffable kingdoms

Where beyond Mind and its rays is the gleam of a glory supernal:

There our sun cannot shine and our moon has no place for her lustres,

There our lightnings flash not, nor fire of these spaces is suffered.

They with bodies impalpable here to our touch and our seeing,

But for a higher delight, to a brighter sense, with more sweetness

Palpable there and visible, thrilled with a lordlier joyance,

Came to the courts of Zeus and his heavens sang to their footsteps.

Harmonies flowed through the blissful coils of the kingdoms of rapture.

Then by his mighty equals surrounded the Thunderer regnant

Veiled his thought in sound that was heard in their souls as they listened.

Veiled are the high gods always lest there should dawn on the mortal

Light too great from the skies and men to their destiny clear-eyed

Walk unsustained like the gods; then Night and Dawn were defeated

And of their masks the deities robbed would be slaves to their subjects.

"Children of Immortality, gods who are joyous for ever,

Rapture is ours and eternity measures our lives by his aeons.

For we desireless toil who have joy in the fall as the triumph,

Knowledge eternal possessing we work for an end that is destined

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Long already beyond by the Will of which Time is the courser.

Therefore death cannot alter our lives nor pain our enjoyment.

But in the world of mortals twilight is lord of its creatures.

Nothing they perfectly see, but all things seek and imagine,

Out of the clod who have come and would climb from their mire to our heavens

Blindly mistaking the throb of their mortal desires for our guidance.

Yet are the heavenly seats not easy even for the chosen:

Rough and remote is that path; that ascent is too hard for the death-bound.

Hard are God's terms and few can meet them of men who are mortal.

Mind resists; their breath is a clog; by their tools they are hampered.

How shall they win in their earth to our skies who are clay and a life-wind,

But that their hearts we invade? Our shocks on their lives come incessant,

Ease discourage and penetrate coarseness; sternness celestial.

Forces their souls towards the skies and their bodies by anguish are sifted.

We in the mortal wake an immortal strength by our tortures

And by the flame of our lightnings choose out the vessels of godhead.

This is the nature of earth that to blows she responds and by scourgings

Travails excited; pain is the bed of her blossoms of pleasure.

Earth that was wakened by pain to life and by hunger to thinking

Left to her joys rests inert and content with her gains and her station.

But for the unbearable whips of the gods back soon to her matter

She would go glad and the goal would be missed and the aeons be wasted.

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But for the god in their breasts unsatisfied, but for his spurrings

Soon would the hero turn beast and the sage reel back to the savage;

Man from his difficult heights would recoil and be mud in the earth-mud.

This by pain we prevent; we compel his feet to the journey.

But in their minds to impression made subject, by forms of things captured

Blind is the thought and presumptuous the hope and they swerve from our goading;

Blinded are human hearts by desire and fear and possession,

Darkened is knowledge on earth by hope the helper of mortals.

Now too from earth and her children voices of anger and weeping

Beat at our thrones; 'tis the grief and the wrath of fate-stricken creatures,

Mortals struggling with destiny, hearts that are slaves to their sorrow.

We unmoved by the cry will fulfil our unvarying purpose.

Troy shall fall at last and the ancient ages shall perish.

You who are lovers of Ilion turn from the moans of her people,

Chase from your hearts their prayers, blow back from your nostrils the incense.

Let not one nation resist by its glory the good of the ages.

Twilight thickens over man and he moves to his winter of darkness.

Troy that displaced with her force and her arms the luminous ancients,

Sinks in her turn by the ruder strength of the half-savage Achaians.

They to the Hellene-shall yield and the Hellene fall by the Roman.

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Rome too shall not endure, but by strengths ill-shaped shall be broken,

Nations formed in the ice and mist, confused and crude-hearted.

So shall the darker and ruder always prevail o'er the brilliant

Till in its turn to a ruder and darker it falls and is shattered.

So shall mankind make speed to destroy what 'twas mighty creating.

Ever since knowledge failed and the ancient ecstasy slackened,

Light has been helper to death and darkness increases the victor.

So shall it last till the. fallen ages return to their greatness.

For if the twilight be helped not, night o'er the world cannot darken;

Night forbidden how shall a greater dawn be effected?

Gods of the light who know and resist that the doomed may have succour,

Always then shall desire and passion strive with Ananke?

Conquer the cry of your heart-strings that man too may conquer his sorrow

Stilled in his yearnings. Cease, O ye gods, from the joy of rebellion.

Open the eye of the soul, admit the voice of the Silence."

So in the courts of Heaven august the Thunderer puissant

Spoke to his sons in their souls and they heard him, mighty in silence.

Then to her brother divine the white-armed passionless Hera:

"Zeus, we remember; thy sons forget, Apollo and Ares."

"Hera, queen of the heavens, they forget not, but choose to be mindless.

This is the greatness of gods that they know and can put back the knowledge;

Doing the work they have chosen they turn not for fruit norfor failure;

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Griefless they walk to their goal and strain not their eyes towards the ending.

Light that they have they can lose with a smile, not as souls in the darkness

Clutch at every beam and mistake their one ray for all splendour.

All things are by Time and the Will eternal that moves us,

And for each birth its hour is set in the night or the dawning.

There is an hour for knowledge, an hour to forget and to labour."

Great Cronion ceased and high in the heavenly silence

Rose in their midst the voice of the loud impetuous Ares

Sounding far in the luminous fields of his soul as with thunder.

"Father, we know and we have not forgotten. This is our godhead,

Still to strive and never to yield to the evil that conquers.

I will not dwell with the Greeks nor aid them save forced by Ananke

And because lives of the great and the blood of the strong are my portion.

This too thou knowest, our nature enjoys in mankind its fulfilment.

War is my nature and greatness and hardness, the necks of the vanquished;

Force is my soul and strength is my bosom; I shout in the battle

Breaking cities like toys and the nations are playthings of Ares:

Hither and thither I shove them and throw down or range on my table.

Constancy most I love, nobility, virtue and courage;

Fugitive hearts I abhor and the nature fickle as sea-foam.

Now if the ancient spirit of Titan battle is over,-

Tros fights no more on the earth, nor now Heracles tramples and struggles,

Bane of the hydra or slaying the Centaurs o'er Pelion driven,

Now if the earth no more must be shaken by Titan horse-hooves,

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Since to a pettier framework all things are fitted consenting,

Yet will I dwell not in Greece nor favour the nurslings of Pallas.

I will await the sons of my loins and the teats of the she-wolf,

Consuls browed like the cliffs and plebeians stern of the wolf-brood,

Senates of kings and armies of granite that grow by disaster;

Such be the nation august that is fit for the favour of Ares!

They shall fulfil me and honour my mother, imperial Hera.

Then with an iron march they shall move to their world-wide dominion.

Through the long centuries rule and at last because earth is impatient.

Slowly with haughtiness perish compelled by mortality's transience

Leaving a Roman memory stamped on the ages of weakness."

But to his son farsounding the Father high of the Immortals:

"So let it be since such is the will in thee, mightiest Ares:

Thou shalt till sunset prevail, O war-god, fighting for Troya."

So he decreed and the soul of the Warrior sternly consented.

He from his seats arose and down on the summits of Ida

Flaming through Space in his cloud in a headlong glory descended.

Prone like a thunderbolt flaming down from the hand of the Father.

Thence in his chariot drawn by living fire and by swiftness.

Thundered down to earth's plains the mighty impetuous Ares.

Far where Deiphobus stern was labouring stark and outnumbered

Smiting the Achaian myriads back on the right of the carnage,

Over the hosts in his car he stood and darkened the Argives.

But in the courts divine the Thunderer spoke to his children:

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"Ares resisting a present Fate for the hope of the future

Gods, has gone forth from us. Choose thou thy paths, O my daughter.

More than thy brother assailed by the night that darkens o'er creatures.

Choose the silence in heaven or choose the struggle mid mortals.

Golden joy of the worlds, O thou roseate white Aphrodite.

" Then with her starry eyes and bosom of bliss from the immortals

Glowing and rosy-limbed cried the wonderful white Aphrodite,

Drawing her fingers like flower? through the flowing gold of her tresses,

Calm, discontented, her perfect mouth like a rose of resistance

Chidingly budded gainst Fate, a charm to their senses enamoured.

"Well do I know thou hast given my world to Hera and Pallas.

What though my temples shall stand in Paphos and island Cythera

And though the Greek be a priest for my thoughts and a lyre for my singing,

Beauty pursuing and light through the figures of grace and of rhythm,-

Forms shall he mould for men's eyes that the earth has forgotten and mourns for.

Mould even the workings of Pallas to commune with Paphia's sweetness.

Mould Hephaestus' craft in the gaze of the gold Aphrodke,-

Only my form he pursues that I wear for a mortal enchantment,

He to whom now thou givest the world, the Ionian, the Hellene,

But for my might is unfit which Babylon worshipped and Sidon

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Palely received from the past in images faint of the gladness

Once that was known by the children of men when the thrill of their members

Was but the immortal joy of the spirit overflowing their bodies,

Wine-cups of God's desire; but their clay from my natural greatness

Falters betrayed to pain, their delight they have turned into ashes.

Nor to my peaks shall he rise and the perfect fruit of my promptings,

There where the senses swoon but the heart is delivered by rapture;

Never my touch can cling to his soul nor reply from his heart-strings.

Once could my godhead surprise all the stars with the seas of its rapture;

Once the world in its orbit danced to a marvellous rhythm.

Men in their limits, gods in their amplitudes answered my calling;

Life was moved by a chant of delight that sang from the spaces,

Sang from the Soul of the Vast, its rapture clasping its creatures.

Sweetly agreed my fire with their soil and their hearts were as altars.

Pure were its crests; 'twas not dulled with earth, 'twas not lost in the hazes

Then when the sons of earth and the daughters of heaven together

Met on lone mountain peaks or, linked on wild beach and green meadow

Twining embraced. For I danced on Taygetus' peaks and o'er Ida

Naked and loosing my golden hair like a nimbus of glory

O'er a deep-ecstasied earth that was drunk with my roses and whiteness.

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There was no shrinking nor veil in our old Saturnian kingdoms.

Equals were heaven and earth, twin gods on the lap of Dione.

Now shall my waning greatness perish and pass out of Nature.

For though the Romans, my children, shall grasp at the strength of their mother,

They shall not hold the god, but lose in unsatisfied orgies

Yet what the earth has kept of my j'oy, my glory, my puissance,

Who shall but drink for a troubled hour in the dusk of the sunset

Dregs of my wine Pandemian missing the Uranian sweetness.

So shall the night descend on the greatness and rapture of living;

Creeds that refuse shall persuade the world to revolt from its mother.

Pallas' adorers shall loathe me and Hera's scorn me for lowness;

Beauty shall pass from men's work and delight from, theirplay and their labour;

Earth restored to the Cyclops shall shrink from the gold Aphrodite.

So shall I live diminished, owned but by beasts in the forest,

Birds of the air and the gods in their heavens, but disgraced in the mortal."

Then to the discontented rosy-mouthed Aphrodite

Zeus replied, the Father divine: "O goddess Astarte,

What are these thoughts thou hast suffered to wing from thy rose-mouth immortal?

Bees that sting and delight are the words from thy lips, Cytherea.

Art thou not womb of the world and from thee are the thronging of creatures?

And didst thou cease the worlds too would cease and the aeons be ended.

Suffer my Greeks; accept who accept thee. O gold Dionaean.

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They in the works of their craft and their dreams shall enthrone thee for ever,

Building thee temples in Paphos and Eryx and island Cythera,

Building the fane more enduring and bright of thy golden ideal.

Even if natures of men could renounce thee and God do without thee,

Rose of love and sea of delight, O my child Aphrodite,

Still wouldst thou live in the worship they gave thee protected from fading,

Splendidly statued and shrined in men's works and men's thoughts, Cytherea."

Pleased and blushing with bliss of her praise and the thought of her empire

Answered, as cries a harp in heaven, the gold Aphrodite:

"Father. I know and I spoke but to hear from another my praises.

I am the womb of the world and the cause of this teeming of creatures,.

And if discouraged I ceased, God's world would lose heart and would perish.

How will you do then without me your works of wisdom and greatness,

Hera, queen of heaven, and thou, O my sister Athene?

Yes, I shall reign and endure though the pride of my workings be conquered.

What though no second Helen find a second Paris,

Lost though their glories of form to the earth, though their confident gladness

Pass from a race misled and forgetting the sap that it sprang from.

They are eternal in man in the worship of beauty and rapture.

Ever while earth is embraced by the sun and hot with his kisses

And while a Will supernal works through the passions of Nature,

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Me shall men seek with my light or their darkness, sweetly or crudely,

Cold on the ice of the north or warm in the heats of the southland,

Slowly enduring my touch or with violence rapidly burning.

I am the sweetness of living, I am the touch of the Master.

Love shall die bound to my stake like a victim adorned as for bridal,

Life shall be bathed in my flames and be purified gold or be ashes.

I, Aphrodite, shall move the world for ever and ever.

Yet now since most to me, Father of all, the ages arriving,

Hostile, rebuke my heart and turn from my joy and my sweetness.

I will resist and not yield, nor care what I do, so I conquer.

Often I curbed my mood for your sakes and was gracious and kindly,

Often I lay at Hera's feet and obeyed her commandments

Tranquil and proud or o'ercome by a honeyed and ancient compulsion

Fawned on thy pureness and served thy behests, O my sister Pallas.

Deep was the love that united us, happy the wrestle and clasping;

Love divided, Love united, Love was our mover.

But since you now overbear and would scourge me and chain and control me,

War I declare on you all, O my Father and brothers and sisters.

Henceforth I do my will as the joy in me prompts or the anger.

Ranging the earth with my beauty and passion and golden enjoyments

All whom I can, I will bind; I will drive at the bliss of my workings,

Whether men's hearts are seized by the joy or seized by thetorture.

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Most I will plague your men, your worshippers and in my malice

Break up your works with confusion divine, O my mother and sister;

Then shall you fume and resist and be helpless and pine with my torments.

Yet will I never relent but always be sweet and malignant.

Cruel and tyrannous, hurtful and subtle, a charm and a torture.

Thou too, O father Zeus, shalt always be vexed with my doings;

Called in each moment to judge thou shalt chafe at our cry and our quarrels,

Often grope for thy. thunderbolt, often frown magisterial

joining in vain thy awful brows o'er thy turbulent children.

Yet in thy wrath recall my might and my wickedness, Father;

Hurt me not then too much lest the world and thyself too should suffer.

Save, O my Father, life and grace and the charm of the senses:

Love preserve lest the heart of the world grow dulled and forsaken."

Smiling her smile immortal of love and of mirth and of malice

White Aphrodite arose in her loveliness armed for the conflict.

Golden and careless and joyous she went like a wild bird that winging

Flits from bough to bough and resumes its chant interrupted.

Love where her white feet trod bloomed up like a flower from the spaces;

Mad round her touches billowed incessantly laughter and rapture.

Thrilled with her feet was the bosom of Space, for her amorous motion

Floated a flower on the wave of her bliss or swayed like the lightning.

Rich as a summer fruit and fresh as Spring's blossoms her body

Gleaming and blushing, veiled and bare and with ecstasy smiting

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Burned out rosy and white through her happy ambrosial raiment,

Golden-tressed and a charm, her bosom a fragrance and peril.

So was she framed to the gaze as she came from the seats of the Mighty,

So embodied she visits the hearts of men and their dwellings

And in her breathing tenement laughs at the eyes that can see her.

Swirt-footed down to the Troad she hastened thrilling the earth-gods.

There with ambrosial secrecy veiled, admiring the heroes

Strong and beautiful, might of the warring and glory of armour,

Over her son Aeneas she stood, his guard in the battle.

But in the courts divine the Thunderer spoke mid his children:

"Thou for a day and a night and another day and a nightfall,

White Aphrodite, prevail; o'er thee too the night is extended.

She has gone forth who made men like gods in their glory and gladness.

Now in the darkness coming all beauty must wane or be tarnished;

Joy shall fade and mighty Love grow fickle and fretful;

Even as a child that is scared in the night, he shall shake in his chambers.

Yet shall a portion be kept for these, Ares and white Aphrodite.

Thou whom already thy Pythoness bears not, torn by thy advent,

Caverned already who sittest in Delphi knowing thy future,

What wilt thou do with the veil and the night, O burning Apollo,"

Then from the orb of his glory unbearable save to immortals

Bright and austere replied the beautiful mystic Apollo:

"Zeus, I know that I fade; already the night is around me.

Dusk she extends her reign and obscures my lightnings witherror.

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Therefore my prophets mislead men's hearts to the ruin appointed.

Therefore Cassandra cries in vain to her sire and her brothers.

All I endure I foresee and the strength in me waits for its coming:

All I foresee I approve; for I know what is willed, O Cronion.

Yet is the fierce strength wroth in my breast at the need of approval

And for the human race fierce pity works in my bosom;

Wroth is my splendid heart with the cowering knowledge of mortals,

Wroth are my burning eyes with the purblind vision of reason.

I will go forth from your seats and descend to the night among mortals

There to guard the flame and the mystery; vast in my moments

Rare and sublime to sound like a sea against Time and its limits,

Cry like a spirit in pain in the hearts of the priest and the poet,

Cry against limits set and disorder sanities bounded.

Jealous for truth to the end my might shall prevail and for ever

Shatter the moulds that men make to imprison their limitless spirits.

Dire, overpowering the brain I shall speak out my oracles splendid.

Then in their ages of barren light or lucidity fruitful

Whenso the clear gods think they have conquered earth and its mortals,

Hidden God from all eyes, they shall wake from their dream and recoiling

Still they shall find in their paths the fallen and dark Apollo."

So he spoke, repressing his dreadful might in his bosom,

And from their high seats passed, his soul august and resplendent

Drawn to the anguish of men and the fierce terrestrial labour.

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Down he dropped with a roar of light invading the regions,

And in his fierce and burning spirit intense and uplifted

Sure of his luminous truth and careless for weakness of mortals

Flaming oppressed the earth with his dire intolerant beauty.

Over the summits descending that slept in the silence of heaven,

He through the spaces angrily drew towards the tramp and the shouting

Over the speeding of Xanthus and over the pastures of Troya.

Clang of his argent bow was the wrath restrained of the mighty,

Stern was his pace like Fate's; so he came to the warfare of mortals

And behind Paris strong and inactive waited God's moment

Knowing what should arrive, nor disturbed like men by their hopings.

But in the courts of Heaven Zeus to his brother immortal

Turned like a menaced king on his counsellor smiling augustly:

"Seest thou, Poseidon, this sign that great gods revolting have left us,

Follow their hearts and strive with Ananke? Yet though they struggle,

Thou and I will do our will with the world, O earth-shaker."

Answered to Zeus the besieger of earth, the voice of the waters:

"This is our strength and our right, for we are the kings and the masters.

Too much pity has been and yielding of Heaven to mortals.

I will go down with my chariot drawn by my thunder-maned coursers

Into the battle and thrust down Troy with my hand to the silence,

Even though she cling round the snowy knees of our child Aphrodite

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Or with Apollo's sun take refuge from Night and her shadows.

I will not pity her pain, who am ruthless even as my surges.

Brother, thou knowest, O Zeus, that I am a king and a trader;

For on my paths I receive earth's skill and her merchandise gather,

Traffic richly in pearls and bear the swift ships in my bosom.

Blue are my waves and they call men's hearts to wealth and adventure.

Lured by the shifting surges they launch their delight and their treasures

Trusting the toil of years to the perilous moments of Ocean.

Huge man's soul in its petty frame goes wrestling with Nature

Over her vasts and his fragile ships between my horizons

Buffeting death in his solitudes labour through swell and through storm-blast

Bound for each land with her sons and watched for by eyes in each haven.

I from Tyre up to Gades trace on my billows their trade-routes

And on my vast and spuming Atlantic suffer their rudders.

Carthage and Greece are my children, the marts of the world are my term-posts.

Who then deserves the earth if not he who enriches and fosters?

But thou hast favoured thy sons, O Zeus; O Hera, earth's sceptres

Still were denied me and kept for strong Ares and brilliant Apollo.

Now all your will shall be done, so you give me the earth for my nations.

Gold shall make men like gods and bind their thoughts into oneness;

Peace I will build with gold and heaven with the pearls of my caverns."

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Smiling replied to his brother's craft the mighty Cronion:

"Lord of the boundless seas, Poseidon, soul of the surges,

Well thou knowest that earth shall be seized as a booth for the trader.

Rome nor Greece nor France can drive back Carthage for ever.

Always each birth of the silence attaining the field and the movement

Takes from Time its reign; for it came for its throne and its godhead.

So too shall Mammon take and his sons their hour from the ages.

Yet is the flame and the dust last end of the silk and the iron,

And at their end the king and the prophet shall govern the nations.

Even as Troy, so shall Babylon flame up to heaven for the spoiler

Wailed by the merchant afar as he sees the red glow from the Ocean."

Up from the seats of the Mighty the Earth-shaker rose; his raiment

Round him purple and dominant rippled and murmured and whispered,

Whispered of argosies sunk and the pearls and the Nereids playing,

Murmured of azure solitudes, sounded of storm and the death-wail.

Even as the march of his waters so was the pace of the sea-god

Flowing on endless through Time; with the glittering symbol of empire

Crowned were his fatal brows; in his grasp was the wrath of the trident,

Tripled forces, life-shattering, brutal, imperial, sombre.

Resonant, surging, vast in the pomp of his clamorous greatness

Proud and victorious he came to his home in the far-spuming waters.

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Even as a soul from the heights of thought plunges back into living,

So he plunged like a rock through the foam; for it falls from a mountain

Overpeering the waves in some silence of desolate waters

Left to the wind and the sea-gull where Ocean alone with the ages

Dreams of the calm of the skies or tosses its spray to the wind-gods,

Tosses for ever its foam in the solitude huge of its longings

Far from the homes and the noises of men. So the dark-browed Poseidon

Came to his coral halls and the sapphire stables of Nereus

Ever where champ their bits the harnessed steeds of the Ocean

Watched by foam-white girls in the caverns of still Amphitrite.

There was his chariot yoked by the Tritons, drawn by his coursers

Born of the fleeing sea-spray and shod with the north-wind .who journey

Black like the front of the storm and clothed with their manes as with thunder.

This now rose from its depths to the upper tumults of Ocean

Bearing the awful brows and the mighty form of the sea-god

And from the roar of the surges fast o'er the giant margin

Came remembering the storm and the swiftness wide towards the Troad.

So among men he arrived to the clamorous labours of Ares,

Close by the stern Diomedes stood and frowned o'er the battle.

He for the Trojan slaughter chose for his mace and his sword-edge

Iron Tydeus' son and the adamant heart of young Pyrrhus.

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But in the courts divine the Father high of the immortals

Turned in his heart to the brilliant offspring born of his musings,

She who tranquil observes and judges her father and all things.

"What shall I say to the thought that is calm in thy breasts, O Athene?

Have I not given thee earth for thy portion, throned thee and armoured,

Darkened Cypris' smile, dimmed Hera's son and Latona's?

Swift in thy silent ambition, proud in thy radiant sternness,

Girl, thou shalt rule with the Greek and the Saxon, the Frank and the Roman.

Worker and fighter and builder and thinker, light of the reason,

Men shall leave all temples to crowd in thy courts, O Athene.

Go then and do my will, prepare man's tribes for their fullness."

But with her high clear smile on him answered the mighty Athene.

Wisely and soberly, tenderly smiled she chiding her father

Even as a mother might rail at her child when he hides and dissembles:

"Zeus, I see and I am not deceived by thy words in my spirit.

We but build forms for thy thought while thou smilest down high o'er our toiling;

Even as men are we tools for thee, who are thy children and dear ones.

All this life is thy sport and thou workst like a, boy at his engines

Making a toil of the game and a play of the serious labour.

Then to that play thou callest us wearing a sombre visage,

This consulting, that to our wills confiding, O Ruler;

Choosing thy helpers, hastened by those whom thou lurest to oppose thee

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Guile thou usest with gods as with mortals, scheming, deceiving,

And at the wrath and the love thou hast prompted laughest in secret.

So we too who are sisters and enemies, lovers and rivals,

Fondled and baffled in turn obey thy will and thy cunning,

I, thy girl of war, and the rosy-white Aphrodite.

Always we served but thy pleasure since our immortal beginnings,

Always each other we helped by our play and our wrestlings and quarrels.

This too I know that I pass preparing the paths of Apollo

And at the end as his sister and slave and bride I must sojourn

Rapt to his courts of mystic light and unbearable brilliance.

Was I not ever condemned since my birth from the toil of thy musings

Seized like a lyre in my body to sob and to laugh out his music,

Shake as a leaf in his fierceness and leap as a flame in his splendours!

So must I dwell overpowered and so must I labour subjected

Robbed of my loneliness pure and coerced in my radiant freedom,

Now whose clearness and pride are the sovereign joy of thy creatures.

Such the reward that thou keepst for my labour obedient always.

Yet I work and I do thy will, for 'tis mine. O my Father."

Proud of her ruthless lust of thought and action and battle,

Swiftfooted rose the daughter of Zeus from her sessions immortal:

Breasts of the morning unveiled in a purity awful and candid,

Head of the mighty Dawn, the goddess Pallas Athene!

Strong and rapacious she swooped on the world as her prey and her booty

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Down from the courts of the Mighty descending, darting on Ida.

Dire she descended, a god in her reason, a child in her longings,

Joy and woe to the world that is given to the whims of the child-god

Greedy for rule and play and the minds of men and their doings!

So with her aegis scattering light o'er the heads of the nations

Shining-eyed in her boyish beauty severe and attractive

Came to the fields of the Troad, came to the fateful warfare,

Veiled, the goddess calm and pure in her luminous raiment

Zoned with beauty and strength. Rejoicing, spurring the fighters

Close o'er Odysseus she stood and clear-eyed governed the battle.

Zeus to Hephaestus next, the Cyclopean toiler

Turned, Hephaestus the strong-souled, priest and king and a bond-slave,

Servant of men in their homes and their workshops, servant of Nature,

He who has built these worlds and kindles the fire for a mortal.

"Thou, my son, art obedient always. Wisdom is with thee,

Therefore thou know'st and obeyest. Submission is wisdom and knowledge;

He who is blind revolts and he who is limited struggles:

Strife is not for the infinite; wisdom observes to accomplish.

Troy and her sons and her works are thy food today, O Hephaestus."

And to his father the Toiler answered, the silent Seer:

"Yes, I obey thee, my Father, and That which than thou is more mighty;

Even as thou obeyest by rule, so I by my labour.

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Now must I heap the furnace, now must I toil at the smithy,

I who have flamed on the altar of sacrifice helping the sages.

I am the Cyclops, the lamester, who once was pure and a high-priest.

Holy the pomp of my flames ascendent from pyre and from altar

Robed men's souls for their heavens and my smoke was a pillar to Nature.

Though I have burned in the sight of the sage and the heart of the hero,

Now is no nobler hymn for my ear than the clanging of metal,

Breath of human greed and the dolorous pant of the engines.

Still I repine not, but. toil; for to toil was I yoked by my Maker.

I am your servant, O Gods, and his of whom you are servants."

But to the Toiler Zeus replied, to the servant of creatures:

"What is the thought thou hast uttered betrayed by thy speech, O Hephaestus?

True is it earth shall grow as a smithy, the smoke of the furnace

Fill men's eyes and their souls shall be stunned with the clang of the hammers,

Yet in the end there is rest on the peak of a labour accomplished.

Nor shall the might of the thinker be quelled by that iron oppression,

Nor shall the soul of the warrior despair in the darkness triumphant,

For when the night shall be deepest, dawn shall increase on the mountains

And in the heart of the worst the best shall be born by my wisdom.

Pallas thy sister shall guard man's knowledge fighting the earth-smoke.

Thou too art mighty to live through the clamour even as Apollo.

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Work then, endure; expect from the Silence an end and thywages."

So King Hephaestus arose and passed from the courts of his father;

Down upon earth he came with his lame omnipotent motion;

And with uneven steps absorbed and silent the Master

Worked employed mid the wheels of the cars as a smith in his smithy,

But it was death and bale that he forged, not the bronze and the iron.

Stark, like a fire obscured by its smoke, through the spear-casts he laboured

Helping Ajax' war and the Theban and Phocian fighters.

Zeus to his grandiose helper next, who proved and unmoving,

Calm in her greatness waited the mighty command of her husband:

"Hera, sister and spouse, what my will is thou knowest, O consort.

One are our blood and our hearts, nor the thought for the words of the speaker

Waits, but each other we know and ourselves and the Vast and the heavens,

Life and all between and all beyond and the ages.

That which Space not knows nor Time, we have known, O my sister.

Therefore our souls are one soul and our minds become mirrors of oneness.

Go then and do my will, O thou mighty one, burning down Troya."

Silent she rose from the seats of the Blissful, Hera majestic,

And with her flowing garment and mystical zone through the spaces

Haloed came like the moon on an evening of luminous silence

Down upon Ida descending, a snow-white swan on the greenness,

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Down upon Ida the mystic haunted by footsteps immortal

Ever since out of the Ocean it rose and lived gazing towards heaven.

There on a peak of the mountains alone with the sea and the azure

Voiceless and mighty she paused like a thought on the summits of being

Clasped by all heaven; the winds at play in her gust-scattered raiment

Sported insulting her gracious strength with their turbulent sweetness,

Played with their mother and queen; but she stood absorbed and unheeding,

Mute, with her sandalled foot for a moment thrilling the grasses,

Dumbly adored by a soul in the mountains, a thought in the rivers,

Roared to loud by her lions. The voice of the cataracts falling

Entered her soul profound and it heard eternity's rumour.

Silent its gaze immense contained the wheeling of aeons.

Huge-winged through Time flew her thought and its grandiose vast revolutions

Turned and returned. So musing her timeless creative spirit,

Master of Time its instrument, grieflessly hastening forward

Parted with greatnesses dead and summoned new strengths from their stables;

Maned they came to her call and filled with their pacings the future.

Calm, with the vision satisfied, thrilled by the grandeurs within her,

Down in a billow of whiteness and gold and delicate raiment

Gliding the daughter of Heaven came to the earth that received her

Glad of the tread divine and bright with her more than with sunbeams.

King Agamemnon she found and smiling on Sparta's levies

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Mixed unseen with the far-glinting spears of the haughty Mycenae.

Then to the Mighty who tranquil abode and august in his regions

Zeus, while his gaze over many forms and high-seated godheads

Passed like a swift-fleeing eagle over the peaks and the glaciers

When to his eyrie he flies alone through the vastness and silence:

"Artemis, child of my loins and you, O legioned immortals,

All you have heard. Descend, O ye gods, to your sovereign stations,

Labour rejoicing whose task is joy and your bliss is creation;

Shrink from no act that Necessity asks from your luminous natures.

Thee I have given no part in the years that come, O my daughter,

Huntress swift of the worlds who with purity all things pursuest.

Yet not less is thy portion intended than theirs who o'erpass thee:

Helpedare the souls that wait more than strengths soon fulfilled and exhausted.

Archeress, brilliance, wait thine hour from the speed of theages."

So they departed, Artemis leading lightning-tasselled.

Ancient Themis remained and awful Dis and Ananke.

Then mid these last of the gods who shall stand when all others have perished,

Zeus to the Silence obscure under iron brows of that goddess,-

Griefless, unveiled was her visage, dire and unmoved and eternal:

"Thou and I, O Dis, remain and our sister Ananke.

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That which the joyous hearts of our children, radiant heaven-moths

Flitting mid flowers of sense for the honey of thought, have not captured,

That which Poseidon forgets mid the pomp and the roar of his waters,

We three keep in our hearts. By the Light that I watch for unsleeping,

By thy tremendous consent to the silence and darkness, O Hades,

By her delight renounced and the prayers and the worship of mortals

Making herself as an engine of God without bowels or vision,-

Yet in that engine are only heart-beats, yet is her riddle

Only Love that is veiled and pity that suffers and slaughters,

We three are free from ourselves, O Dis, and free from each other.

Do then, O King of the Night, observe then with Time for thy servant

Not my behest, but What she and thou and I are for ever."

Mute the Darkness sat like a soul unmoved through the aeons,

Then came a voice from the silence of Dis, from the night there came wisdom.

"Yes, I have chosen and that which I chose I endure, O Cronion,

Though to the courts of the gods I come as a threat and a shadow,

Even though none to their counsels call me, none to their pastime,

None companions me willingly; even thy daughter, my consort,

Trembling whom once from our sister Demeter I plucked like a blossom

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Torn from Sicilian fields, while Fate reluctant, consenting,

Bowed her head, lives but by her gasps of the sun and the azure;

Stretched are her hands to the light and she seeks for the clasp of her mother.

I, I am Night and her reign and that of which Night is a symbol.

All to me comes, even thou shalt come to me, brilliant Cronion.

All here exists by me whom all walk fearing and shunning;

He who shuns not, He am I and thou and Ananke.

All things I take to my bosom that Life may be swift in her voyage;

For out of death is Life and not by birth and her motions

And behind Night is light and not in the sun and his splendours.

Troy to the Night I will gather a wreath for my shadows, O grower."

So in his arrogance dire the vast invincible Death-god

Triumphing passed out of heaven with Themis and silent Ananke.

Zeus alone in the spheres of his bliss, in his kingdom of brilliance

Sat divine and alarmed; for even the gods in their heavens

Scarce shall live who have gazed on the unveiled face of Ananke,

Heard the accents dire of the Darkness that waits for the ages.

Awful and dull grew his eyes and mighty and still grew his members,

Back from his nature he drew to the passionless peaks of the spirit,

Throned where it dwells for ever uplifted and silent and changeless

Far beyond living and death, beyond Nature and ending of Nature.

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There for a while he dwelt veiled, protected from Dis and his greatness;

Then to the works of the world he returned and the joy of his musings.

Life and the blaze of the mighty soul that he was of God's making

Dawned again in the heavenly eyes and the majestied semblance.

Comforted heaven he beheld, to the green of the earth was attracted.

But through this Space unreal, but through these worlds that are shadows

Went the awful Three. None saw them pass, none felt them.

Only in the heavens was a tread as of death, in the air was a winter,

Earth oppressed moaned long like a woman striving with anguish.

Ida saw them not, but her grim lions cowered in their caverns,

Ceased for a while on her slopes the eternal laughter of fountains.

Over the ancient ramparts of Dardanus' high-roofed city

Darkening her victor domes and her gardens of life and its sweetness

Silent they came. Unseen and unheard was the dreadful arrival.

Troy and her gods dreamed secure in the moment flattered by sunlight.

Dim to the citadel high they arrived and their silence invaded

Pallas' marble shrine where stern and white in her beauty,

Armed on her pedestal, trampling the prostrate image of darkness

Mighty Athene's statue guarded imperial Troya.

Dim and vast they entered in. Then through all the great city

Huge a rushing sound was heard from her gardens and places

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And in their musings her seers as they strove with night and with error

And in the fane of Apollo Laocoon torn by his visions

Heard aghast the voice of Troy's deities fleeing from Troya,

Saw the flaming lords of her households drive in a death-rout

Forth from her ancient halls and their noble familiar sessions.

Ghosts of her splendid centuries wailed on the wings of the doom-blast.

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Moaning the Dryads fled and his Naiads passed from Scamander

Leaving the world to deities dumb of the clod and the earth-smoke,

And from their tombs and their shrines the shadowy Ancestors faded.

Filled was the air with their troops and the sound of a vast lamentation.

wailing they went, lamenting mortality's ages of greatness,

Ruthless Ananke's deeds and the mortal conquests of Hades.

Then in the fane Palladian the shuddering priests of Athene

Entered the darkened shrine and saw on the suffering marble

Shattered Athene's, mighty statue prostrate as conquered,

But on its pedestal rose o'er the unhurt image of darkness

Awful shapes, a Trinity dim and dire unto mortals.

Dumb they fell down on the earth and the life-breath was slain in their bosoms

And in the noon there was night. And Apollo passed out of Troya.

taken from Ilion - Book VIII - "The Book of the Gods"

by Sri Aurobindo

(Centenary Edition, Pondicherry : 1972), pp. 492-512)

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