Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

guarded for her pure-eyed sacraments

      The valley clefts between her breasts of joy,

      Her mountain altars for the fires of dawn

      And nuptial beaches where the ocean couched

      And the huge chanting of her prophet woods.

      Fields had she of her solitary mirth,

      Plains hushed and happy in the embrace of light,

      Alone with the cry of birds and hue of flowers,

      And wildernesses of wonder lit by her moons

      And grey seer-evenings kindling with the stars

      And dim movement in the night’s infinitude.

      August, exulting in her Maker’s eye,

      She felt her nearness to him in earth’s breast,

      Conversed still with a Light behind the veil,

      Still communed with Eternity beyond.

      A few and fit inhabitants she called

      To share the glad communion of her peace;

      The breadth, the summit were their natural home.

      The strong king-sages from their labour done,

      Freed from the warrior tension of their task,

      Came to her serene sessions in these wilds;

      The strife was over, the respite lay in front.

      Happy they lived with birds and beasts and flowers

      And sunlight and the rustle of the leaves,

      And heard the wild winds wandering in the night,

      Mused with the stars in their mute constant ranks,

      And lodged in the mornings as in azure tents,

      And with the glory of the noons were one.

      Some deeper plunged; from life’s external clasp

      Beckoned into a fiery privacy

      In the soul’s unprofaned star-white recess

      They sojourned with an everliving Bliss;

      A Voice profound in the ecstasy and the hush

      They heard, beheld an all-revealing Light.

      All time-made difference they overcame;

      The world was fibred with their own heart-strings;

      Close drawn to the heart that beats in every breast,

      They reached the one self in all through boundless love.

      Attuned to Silence and to the world-rhyme,

      They loosened the knot of the imprisoning mind;

      Achieved was the wide untroubled witness gaze,

      Unsealed was Nature’s great spiritual eye;

      To the height of heights rose now their daily climb:

      Truth leaned to them from her supernal realm;

      Above them blazed eternity’s mystic suns.

      Nameless the austere ascetics without home

      Abandoning speech and motion and desire

      Aloof from creatures sat absorbed, alone,

      Immaculate in tranquil heights of self

      On concentration’s luminous voiceless peaks,

      World-naked hermits with their matted hair

      Immobile as the passionless great hills

      Around them grouped like thoughts of some vast mood

      Awaiting the Infinite’s behest to end.

      The seers attuned to the universal Will,

      Content in Him who smiles behind earth’s forms,

      Abode ungrieved by the insistent days.

      About them like green trees girdling a hill

      Young grave disciples fashioned by their touch,

      Trained to the simple act and conscious word,

      Greatened within and grew to meet their heights.

      Far-wandering seekers on the Eternal’s path

      Brought to these quiet founts their spirit’s thirst

      And spent the treasure of a silent hour

      Bathed in the purity of the mild gaze

      That, uninsistent, ruled them from its peace,

      And by its influence found the ways of calm.

      The Infants of the monarchy of the worlds,

      The heroic leaders of a coming time,

      King-children nurtured in that spacious air

      Like lions gambolling in sky and sun

      Received half-consciously their godlike stamp:

      Formed in the type of the high thoughts they sang

      They learned the wide magnificence of mood

      That makes us comrades of the cosmic urge,

      No longer chained to their small separate selves,

      Plastic and firm beneath the eternal hand,

      Met Nature with a bold and friendly clasp

      And served in her the Power that shapes her works.

      One-souled to all and free from narrowing bonds,

      Large like a continent of warm sunshine

      In wide equality’s impartial joy,

      These sages breathed for God’s delight in things.

      Assisting the slow entries of the gods,

      Sowing in young minds immortal thoughts they lived,

      Taught the great Truth to which man’s race must rise

      Or opened the gates of freedom to a few.

      Imparting to our struggling world the Light

      They breathed like spirits from Time’s dull yoke released,

      Comrades and vessels of the cosmic Force,

      Using a natural mastery like the sun’s:

      Their speech, their silence was a help to earth.

      A magic happiness flowed from their touch;

      Oneness was sovereign in that sylvan peace,

      The wild beast joined in friendship with its prey;

      Persuading the hatred and the strife to cease

      The love that flows from the one Mother’s breast

      Healed with their hearts the hard and wounded world.

      Others escaped from the confines of thought

      To where Mind motionless sleeps waiting Light’s birth,

      And came back quivering with a nameless Force,

      Drunk with a wine of lightning in their cells;

      Intuitive knowledge leaping into speech,

      Seized, vibrant, kindling with the inspired word,

      Hearing the subtle voice that clothes the heavens,

      Carrying the splendour that has lit the suns,

      They sang Infinity’s names and deathless powers

      In metres that reflect the moving