Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

to exceed yourselves thought’s trumpets call,

      Heard by a few, but fewer dare aspire,

      The nympholepts of the ecstasy and the blaze.

      An epic of hope and failure breaks earth’s heart;

      Her force and will exceed her form and fate.

      A goddess in a net of transience caught,

      Self-bound in the pastures of death she dreams of life,

      Self-racked with the pains of hell aspires to joy,

      And builds to hope her altars of despair,

      Knows that one high step might enfranchise all

      And, suffering, looks for greatness in her sons.

      But dim in human hearts the ascending fire,

      The invisible Grandeur sits unworshipped there;

      Man sees the Highest in a limiting form

      Or looks upon a Person, hears a Name.

      He turns for little gains to ignorant Powers

      Or kindles his altar lights to a demon face.

      He loves the Ignorance fathering his pain.

      A spell is laid upon his glorious strengths;

      He has lost the inner Voice that led his thoughts,

      And masking the oracular tripod seat

      A specious Idol fills the marvel shrine.

      The great Illusion wraps him in its veils,

      The soul’s deep intimations come in vain,

      In vain is the unending line of seers,

      The sages ponder in unsubstantial light,

      The poets lend their voice to outward dreams,

      A homeless fire inspires the prophet tongues.

      Heaven’s flaming lights descend and back return,

      The luminous Eye approaches and retires;

      Eternity speaks, none understands its word;

      Fate is unwilling and the Abyss denies;

      The Inconscient’s mindless waters block all done.

      Only a little lifted is Mind’s screen;

      The Wise who know see but one half of Truth,

      The strong climb hardly to a low-peaked height,

      The hearts that yearn are given one hour to love.

      His tale half told, falters the secret Bard;

      The gods are still too few in mortal forms.”

      The Voice withdrew into its hidden skies.

      But like a shining answer from the gods

      Approached through sun-bright spaces Savitri.

      Advancing amid tall heaven-pillaring trees,

      Apparelled in her flickering-coloured robe

      She seemed, burning towards the eternal realms,

      A bright moved torch of incense and of flame

      That from the sky-roofed temple-soil of earth

      A pilgrim hand lifts in an invisible shrine.

      There came the gift of a revealing hour:

      He saw through depths that reinterpret all,

      Limited not now by the dull body’s eyes,

      New-found through an arch of clear discovery,

      This intimation of the world’s delight,

      This wonder of the divine Artist’s make

      Carved like a nectar-cup for thirsty gods,

      This breathing Scripture of the Eternal’s joy,

      This net of sweetness woven of aureate fire.

      Transformed the delicate image-face became

      A deeper Nature’s self-revealing sign,

      A gold-leaf palimpsest of sacred births,

      A grave world-symbol chiselled out of life.

      Her brow, a copy of clear unstained heavens,

      Was meditation’s pedestal and defence,

      The very room and smile of musing Space,

      Its brooding line infinity’s symbol curve.

      Amid her tresses’ cloudy multitude

      Her long eyes shadowed as by wings of Night

      Under that moon-gold forehead’s dreaming breadth

      Were seas of love and thought that held the world;

      Marvelling at life and earth they saw truths far.

      A deathless meaning filled her mortal limbs;

      As in a golden vase’s poignant line

      They seemed to carry the rhythmic sob of bliss

      Of earth’s mute adoration towards heaven

      Released in beauty’s cry of living form

      Towards the perfection of eternal things.

      Transparent grown the ephemeral living dress

      Bared the expressive deity to his view.

      Escaped from surface sight and mortal sense

      The seizing harmony of its shapes became

      The strange significant icon of a Power

      Renewing its inscrutable descent

      Into a human figure of its works

      That stood out in life’s bold abrupt relief

      On the soil of the evolving universe,

      A godhead sculptured on a wall of thought,

      Mirrored in the flowing hours and dimly shrined

      In Matter as in a cathedral cave.

      Annulled were the transient values of the mind,

      The body’s sense renounced its earthly look;

      Immortal met immortal in their gaze.

      Awaked from the close spell of daily use

      That hides soul-truth with the outward form’s disguise,

      He saw through the familiar cherished limbs

      The great and unknown spirit born his child.

      An impromptu from the deeper sight within,

      Thoughts rose in him that knew not their own scope.

      Then to those large and brooding depths whence Love

      Regarded him across the straits of mind,

      He spoke in sentences from the unseen Heights.

      For the hidden prompters of our speech sometimes

      Can use the formulas of a moment’s mood

      To weigh unconscious lips with words from Fate:

      A casual passing phrase can change our life.

      “O spirit, traveller of eternity,

      Who cam’st from the immortal spaces here

      Armed for the splendid hazard of thy life

      To set thy conquering foot on Chance and Time,

      The moon shut in her halo dreams like thee.

      A