Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

unchanged weighs still the imperfect world;

      The splendid youth of Time has passed and failed;

      Heavy and long are the years our labour counts

      And still the seals are firm upon man’s soul

      And weary is the ancient Mother’s heart.

      O Truth defended in thy secret sun,

      Voice of her mighty musings in shut heavens

      On things withdrawn within her luminous depths,

      O Wisdom-Splendour, Mother of the universe,

      Creatrix, the Eternal’s artist Bride,

      Linger not long with thy transmuting hand

      Pressed vainly on one golden bar of Time,

      As if Time dare not open its heart to God.

      O radiant fountain of the world’s delight

      World-free and unattainable above,

      O Bliss who ever dwellst deep-hid within

      While men seek thee outside and never find,

      Mystery and Muse with hieratic tongue,

      Incarnate the white passion of thy force,

      Mission to earth some living form of thee.

      One moment fill with thy eternity,

      Let thy infinity in one body live,

      All-Knowledge wrap one mind in seas of light,

      All-Love throb single in one human heart.

      Immortal, treading the earth with mortal feet

      All heaven’s beauty crowd in earthly limbs!

      Omnipotence, girdle with the power of God

      Movements and moments of a mortal will,

      Pack with the eternal might one human hour

      And with one gesture change all future time.

      Let a great word be spoken from the heights

      And one great act unlock the doors of Fate.”

      His prayer sank down in the resisting Night

      Oppressed by the thousand forces that deny,

      As if too weak to climb to the Supreme.

      But there arose a wide consenting Voice;

      The spirit of beauty was revealed in sound:

      Light floated round the marvellous Vision’s brow

      And on her lips the Immortal’s joy took shape.

      “O strong forerunner, I have heard thy cry.

      One shall descend and break the iron Law,

      Change Nature’s doom by the lone spirit’s power.

      A limitless Mind that can contain the world,

      A sweet and violent heart of ardent calms

      Moved by the passions of the gods shall come.

      All mights and greatnesses shall join in her;

      Beauty shall walk celestial on the earth,

      Delight shall sleep in the cloud-net of her hair,

      And in her body as on his homing tree

      Immortal Love shall beat his glorious wings.

      A music of griefless things shall weave her charm;

      The harps of the Perfect shall attune her voice,

      The streams of Heaven shall murmur in her laugh,

      Her lips shall be the honeycombs of God,

      Her limbs his golden jars of ecstasy,

      Her breasts the rapture-flowers of Paradise.

      She shall bear Wisdom in her voiceless bosom,

      Strength shall be with her like a conqueror’s sword

      And from her eyes the Eternal’s bliss shall gaze.

      A seed shall be sown in Death’s tremendous hour,

      A branch of heaven transplant to human soil;

      Nature shall overleap her mortal step;

      Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will.”

      As a flame disappears in endless Light

      Immortally extinguished in its source,

      Vanished the splendour and was stilled the word.

      An echo of delight that once was close,

      The harmony journeyed towards some distant hush,

      A music failing in the ear of trance,

      A cadence called by distant cadences,

      A voice that trembled into strains withdrawn.

      Her form retreated from the longing earth

      Forsaking nearness to the abandoned sense,

      Ascending to her unattainable home.

      Lone, brilliant, vacant lay the inner fields;

      All was unfilled inordinate spirit space,

      Indifferent, waste, a desert of bright peace.

      Then a line moved on the far edge of calm:

      The warm-lipped sentient soft terrestrial wave,

      A quick and many-murmured moan and laugh,

      Came gliding in upon white feet of sound.

      Unlocked was the deep glory of Silence’ heart;

      The absolute unmoving stillnesses

      Surrendered to the breath of mortal air,

      Dissolving boundlessly the heavens of trance

      Collapsed to waking mind. Eternity

      Cast down its incommunicable lids

      Over its solitudes remote from ken

      Behind the voiceless mystery of sleep.

      The grandiose respite failed, the wide release.

      Across the light of fast-receding planes

      That fled from him as from a falling star,

      Compelled to fill its human house in Time

      His soul drew back into the speed and noise

      Of the vast business of created things.

      A chariot of the marvels of the heavens

      Broad-based to bear the gods on fiery wheels,

      Flaming he swept through the spiritual gates.

      The mortal stir received him in its midst.

      Once more he moved amid material scenes,

      Lifted by intimations from the heights

      And in the pauses of the building brain

      Touched by the thoughts that skim the fathomless surge

      Of Nature and wing back to hidden shores.

      The eternal seeker in the aeonic field

      Besieged by the intolerant press of hours

      Again was strong for great swift-footed deeds.

      Awake beneath the ignorant vault of Night,

      He saw the unnumbered people of the stars

      And heard the questioning of the unsatisfied flood

      And