Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

present bliss:

      He hid in his all-knowing mind the rest.

      To those who hearkened to his celestial voice,

      The veil heaven’s pity throws on future pain

      The Immortals’ sanction seemed of endless joy.

      But Aswapati answered to the seer; –

      His listening mind had marked the dubious close,

      An ominous shadow felt behind the words,

      But calm like one who ever sits facing Fate

      Here mid the dangerous contours of earth’s life,

      He answered covert thought with guarded speech:

      “O deathless sage who knowest all things here,

      If I could read by the ray of my own wish

      Through the carved shield of symbol images

      Which thou hast thrown before thy heavenly mind

      I might see the steps of a young godlike life

      Happily beginning luminous-eyed on earth;

      Between the Unknowable and the Unseen

      Born on the borders of two wonder-worlds,

      It flames out symbols of the infinite

      And lives in a great light of inner suns.

      For it has read and broken the wizard seals;

      It has drunk of the Immortal’s wells of joy,

      It has looked across the jewel bars of heaven,

      It has entered the aspiring Secrecy,

      It sees beyond terrestrial common things

      And communes with the Powers that build the worlds,

      Till through the shining gates and mystic streets

      Of the city of lapis lazuli and pearl

      Proud deeds step forth, a rank and march of gods.

      Although in pauses of our human lives

      Earth keeps for man some short and perfect hours

      When the inconstant tread of Time can seem

      The eternal moment which the deathless live,

      Yet rare that touch upon the mortal’s world:

      Hardly a soul and body here are born

      In the fierce difficult movement of the stars,

      Whose life can keep the paradisal note,

      Its rhythm repeat the many-toned melody

      Tirelessly throbbing through the rapturous air

      Caught in the song that sways the Apsara’s limbs

      When she floats gleaming like a cloud of light,

      A wave of joy on heaven’s moonstone floor.

      Behold this image cast by light and love,

      A stanza of the ardour of the gods

      Perfectly rhymed, a pillared ripple of gold!

      Her body like a brimmed pitcher of delight

      Shaped in a splendour of gold-coloured bronze

      As if to seize earth’s truth of hidden bliss.

      Dream-made illumined mirrors are her eyes

      Draped subtly in a slumbrous fringe of jet,

      Retaining heaven’s reflections in their depths.

      Even as her body, such is she within.

      Heaven’s lustrous mornings gloriously recur,

      Like drops of fire upon a silver page,

      In her young spirit yet untouched with tears.

      All beautiful things eternal seem and new

      To virgin wonder in her crystal soul.

      The unchanging blue reveals its spacious thought;

      Marvellous the moon floats on through wondering skies;

      Earth’s flowers spring up and laugh at time and death;

      The charmed mutations of the enchanter life

      Race like bright children past the smiling hours.

      If but this joy of life could last, nor pain

      Throw its bronze note into her rhythmed days!

      Behold her, singer with the prescient gaze,

      And let thy blessing chant that this fair child

      Shall pour the nectar of a sorrowless life

      Around her from her lucid heart of love,

      Heal with her bliss the tired breast of earth

      And cast like a happy snare felicity.

      As grows the great and golden bounteous tree

      Flowering by Alacananda’s murmuring waves,

      Where with enamoured speed the waters run

      Lisping and babbling to the splendour of morn

      And cling with lyric laughter round the knees

      Of heaven’s daughters dripping magic rain

      Pearl-bright from moon-gold limbs and cloudy hair,

      So are her dawns like jewelled leaves of light,

      So casts she her felicity on men.

      A flame of radiant happiness she was born

      And surely will that flame set earth alight:

      Doom surely will see her pass and say no word!

      But too often here the careless Mother leaves

      Her chosen in the envious hands of Fate:

      The harp of God falls mute, its call to bliss

      Discouraged fails mid earth’s unhappy sounds;

      The strings of the siren Ecstasy cry not here

      Or soon are silenced in the human heart.

      Of sorrow’s songs we have enough: bid once

      Her glad and griefless days bring heaven here.

      Or must fire always test the great of soul?

      Along the dreadful causeway of the Gods,

      Armoured with love and faith and sacred joy,

      A traveller to the Eternal’s house,

      Once let unwounded pass a mortal life.”

      But Narad answered not; silent he sat,

      Knowing that words are vain and Fate is lord.

      He looked into the unseen with seeing eyes,

      Then, dallying with the mortal’s ignorance

      Like one who knows not, questioning, he cried:

      “On what high mission went her hastening wheels?

      Whence came she with this glory in her heart

      And Paradise made visible in her eyes?

      What sudden God has met, what face supreme?”

      To whom the king, “The red asoca watched

      Her going forth which now sees her return.

      Arisen into an air of flaming dawn

      Like a bright bird tired of her lonely branch,

      To find her own