Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

      And the blind murmur of primaeval calms?”

      And Satyavan replied to Savitri:

      “In days when yet his sight looked clear on life,

      King Dyumatsena once, the Shalwa, reigned

      Through all the tract which from behind these tops

      Passing its days of emerald delight

      In trusting converse with the traveller winds

      Turns, looking back towards the southern heavens,

      And leans its flank upon the musing hills.

      But equal Fate removed her covering hand.

      A living night enclosed the strong man’s paths,

      Heaven’s brilliant gods recalled their careless gifts,

      Took from blank eyes their glad and helping ray

      And led the uncertain goddess from his side.

      Outcast from empire of the outer light,

      Lost to the comradeship of seeing men,

      He sojourns in two solitudes, within

      And in the solemn rustle of the woods.

      Son of that king, I, Satyavan, have lived

      Contented, for not yet of thee aware,

      In my high-peopled loneliness of spirit

      And this huge vital murmur kin to me,

      Nursed by the vastness, pupil of solitude.

      Great Nature came to her recovered child;

      I reigned in a kingdom of a nobler kind

      Than men can build upon dull Matter’s soil;

      I met the frankness of the primal earth,

      I enjoyed the intimacy of infant God.

      In the great tapestried chambers of her state,

      Free in her boundless palace I have dwelt

      Indulged by the warm mother of us all,

      Reared with my natural brothers in her house.

      I lay in the wide bare embrace of heaven,

      The sunlight’s radiant blessing clasped my brow,

      The moonbeams’ silver ecstasy at night

      Kissed my dim lids to sleep. Earth’s morns were mine;

      Lured by faint murmurings with the green-robed hours

      I wandered lost in woods, prone to the voice

      Of winds and waters, partner of the sun’s joy,

      A listener to the universal speech:

      My spirit satisfied within me knew

      Godlike our birthright, luxuried our life

      Whose close belongings are the earth and skies.

      Before Fate led me into this emerald world,

      Aroused by some foreshadowing touch within,

      An early prescience in my mind approached

      The great dumb animal consciousness of earth

      Now grown so close to me who have left old pomps

      To live in this grandiose murmur dim and vast.

      Already I met her in my spirit’s dream.

      As if to a deeper country of the soul

      Transposing the vivid imagery of earth,

      Through an inner seeing and sense a wakening came.

      A visioned spell pursued my boyhood’s hours,

      All things the eye had caught in coloured lines

      Were seen anew through the interpreting mind

      And in the shape it sought to seize the soul.

      An early child-god took my hand that held,

      Moved, guided by the seeking of his touch,

      Bright forms and hues which fled across his sight;

      Limned upon page and stone they spoke to men.

      High beauty’s visitants my intimates were.

      The neighing pride of rapid life that roams

      Wind-maned through our pastures, on my seeing mood

      Cast shapes of swiftness; trooping spotted deer

      Against the vesper sky became a song

      Of evening to the silence of my soul.

      I caught for some eternal eye the sudden

      King-fisher flashing to a darkling pool;

      A slow swan silvering the azure lake,

      A shape of magic whiteness, sailed through dream;

      Leaves trembling with the passion of the wind,

      Pranked butterflies, the conscious flowers of air,

      And wandering wings in blue infinity

      Lived on the tablets of my inner sight;

      Mountains and trees stood there like thoughts from God.

      The brilliant long-bills in their vivid dress,

      The peacock scattering on the breeze his moons

      Painted my memory like a frescoed wall.

      I carved my vision out of wood and stone;

      I caught the echoes of a word supreme

      And metred the rhythm-beats of infinity

      And listened through music for the eternal Voice.

      I felt a covert touch, I heard a call,

      But could not clasp the body of my God

      Or hold between my hands the World-Mother’s feet.

      In men I met strange portions of a Self

      That sought for fragments and in fragments lived:

      Each lived in himself and for himself alone

      And with the rest joined only fleeting ties;

      Each passioned over his surface joy and grief,

      Nor saw the Eternal in his secret house.

      I conversed with Nature, mused with the changeless stars,

      God’s watch-fires burning in the ignorant Night,

      And saw upon her mighty visage fall

      A ray prophetic of the Eternal’s sun.

      I sat with the forest sages in their trance:

      There poured awakening streams of diamond light,

      I glimpsed the presence of the One in all.

      But still there lacked the last transcendent power

      And Matter still slept empty of its Lord.

      The Spirit was saved, the body lost and mute

      Lived still with Death and ancient Ignorance;

      The Inconscient was its base, the Void its fate.

      But thou hast come and all will surely change:

      I shall feel the World-Mother in thy golden limbs

      And hear her wisdom in thy sacred voice.

      The child of the Void shall be reborn in God,

      My Matter shall evade the Inconscient’s trance.

      My