Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

sound-waves breaking from the soul’s great deeps.

      Some lost to the person and his strip of thought

      In a motionless ocean of impersonal Power,

      Sat mighty, visioned with the Infinite’s light,

      Or, comrades of the everlasting Will,

      Surveyed the plan of past and future Time.

      Some winged like birds out of the cosmic sea

      And vanished into a bright and featureless Vast:

      Some silent watched the universal dance,

      Or helped the world by world-indifference.

      Some watched no more merged in a lonely Self,

      Absorbed in the trance from which no soul returns,

      All the occult world-lines for ever closed,

      The chains of birth and person cast away:

      Some uncompanioned reached the Ineffable.

      As floats a sunbeam through a shady place,

      The golden virgin in her carven car

      Came gliding among meditation’s seats.

      Often in twilight mid returning troops

      Of cattle thickening with their dust the shades

      When the loud day had slipped below the verge,

      Arriving in a peaceful hermit grove

      She rested drawing round her like a cloak

      Its spirit of patient muse and potent prayer.

      Or near to a lion river’s tawny mane

      And trees that worshipped on a praying shore,

      A domed and templed air’s serene repose

      Beckoned to her hurrying wheels to stay their speed.

      In the solemnity of a space that seemed

      A mind remembering ancient silences,

      Where to the heart great bygone voices called

      And the large liberty of brooding seers

      Had left the long impress of their soul’s scene,

      Awake in candid dawn or darkness mooned,

      To the still touch inclined the daughter of Flame

      Drank in hushed splendour between tranquil lids

      And felt the kinship of eternal calm.

      But morn broke in reminding her of her quest

      And from low rustic couch or mat she rose

      And went impelled on her unfinished way

      And followed the fateful orbit of her life

      Like a desire that questions silent gods

      Then passes starlike to some bright Beyond.

      Thence to great solitary tracts she came,

      Where man was a passer-by towards human scenes

      Or sole in Nature’s vastness strove to live

      And called for help to ensouled invisible Powers,

      Overwhelmed by the immensity of his world

      And unaware of his own infinity.

      The earth multiplied to her a changing brow

      And called her with a far and nameless voice.

      The mountains in their anchorite solitude,

      The forests with their multitudinous chant

      Disclosed to her the masked divinity’s doors.

      On dreaming plains, an indolent expanse,

      The death-bed of a pale enchanted eve

      Under the glamour of a sunken sky,

      Impassive she lay as at an age’s end,

      Or crossed an eager pack of huddled hills

      Lifting their heads to hunt a lairlike sky,

      Or travelled in a strange and empty land

      Where desolate summits camped in a weird heaven,

      Mute sentinels beneath a drifting moon,

      Or wandered in some lone tremendous wood

      Ringing for ever with the crickets’ cry

      Or followed a long glistening serpent road

      Through fields and pastures lapped in moveless light

      Or reached the wild beauty of a desert space

      Where never plough was driven nor herd had grazed

      And slumbered upon stripped and thirsty sands

      Amid the savage wild-beast night’s appeal.

      Still unaccomplished was the fateful quest;

      Still she found not the one predestined face

      For which she sought amid the sons of men.

      A grandiose silence wrapped the regal day:

      The months had fed the passion of the sun

      And now his burning breath assailed the soil.

      The tiger heats prowled through the fainting earth;

      All was licked up as by a lolling tongue.

      The spring winds failed; the sky was set like bronze.

      End of Canto Four

      End of Book Four

      BOOK FIVE

The Book of Love

      Canto One

      The Destined Meeting-Place

      But now the destined spot and hour were close;

      Unknowing she had neared her nameless goal.

      For though a dress of blind and devious chance

      Is laid upon the work of all-wise Fate,

      Our acts interpret an omniscient Force

      That dwells in the compelling stuff of things,

      And nothing happens in the cosmic play

      But at its time and in its foreseen place.

      To a space she came of soft and delicate air

      That seemed a sanctuary of youth and joy,

      A highland world of free and green delight

      Where spring and summer lay together and strove

      In indolent and amicable debate,

      Inarmed, disputing with laughter who should rule.

      There expectation beat wide sudden wings

      As if a soul had looked out from earth’s face,

      And all that was in her felt a coming change

      And forgetting obvious joys and common dreams,

      Obedient to Time’s call, to the spirit’s fate,

      Was lifted to a beauty calm and pure

      That lived under the eyes of Eternity.

      A crowd of mountainous heads assailed the sky

      Pushing towards rival shoulders nearer heaven,

      The armoured leaders of an iron line;

      Earth prostrate lay beneath their feet of stone.