Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

god stand shining at her side.

      Cry not to heaven, for she alone can save.

      For this the silent Force came missioned down;

      In her the conscious Will took human shape:

      She only can save herself and save the world.

      O queen, stand back from that stupendous scene,

      Come not between her and her hour of Fate.

      Her hour must come and none can intervene:

      Think not to turn her from her heaven-sent task,

      Strive not to save her from her own high will.

      Thou hast no place in that tremendous strife;

      Thy love and longing are not arbiters there;

      Leave the world’s fate and her to God’s sole guard.

      Even if he seems to leave her to her lone strength,

      Even though all falters and falls and sees an end

      And the heart fails and only are death and night,

      God-given her strength can battle against doom

      Even on a brink where Death alone seems close

      And no human strength can hinder or can help.

      Think not to intercede with the hidden Will,

      Intrude not twixt her spirit and its force

      But leave her to her mighty self and Fate.”

      He spoke and ceased and left the earthly scene.

      Away from the strife and suffering on our globe,

      He turned towards his far-off blissful home.

      A brilliant arrow pointing straight to heaven,

      The luminous body of the ethereal seer

      Assailed the purple glory of the noon

      And disappeared like a receding star

      Vanishing into the light of the Unseen.

      But still a cry was heard in the infinite,

      And still to the listening soul on mortal earth

      A high and far imperishable voice

      Chanted the anthem of eternal love.

      End of Canto Two

      End of Book Six

      BOOK SEVEN

The Book of Yoga

      Canto One

      The Joy of Union; the Ordeal of the Foreknowledge of Death and the Heart’s Grief and Pain

      Fate followed her foreseen immutable road.

      Man’s hopes and longings build the journeying wheels

      That bear the body of his destiny

      And lead his blind will towards an unknown goal.

      His fate within him shapes his acts and rules;

      Its face and form already are born in him,

      Its parentage is in his secret soul:

      Here Matter seems to mould the body’s life

      And the soul follows where its nature drives.

      Nature and Fate compel his free-will’s choice.

      But greater spirits this balance can reverse

      And make the soul the artist of its fate.

      This is the mystic truth our ignorance hides:

      Doom is a passage for our inborn force,

      Our ordeal is the hidden spirit’s choice,

      Ananke is our being’s own decree.

      All was fulfilled the heart of Savitri

      Flower-sweet and adamant, passionate and calm,

      Had chosen and on her strength’s unbending road

      Forced to its issue the long cosmic curve.

      Once more she sat behind loud hastening hooves;

      A speed of armoured squadrons and a voice

      Far-heard of chariots bore her from her home.

      A couchant earth wakened in its dumb muse

      Looked up at her from a vast indolence:

      Hills wallowing in a bright haze, large lands

      That lolled at ease beneath the summer heavens,

      Region on region spacious in the sun,

      Cities like chrysolites in the wide blaze

      And yellow rivers pacing lion-maned

      Led to the Shalwa marches’ emerald line,

      A happy front to iron vastnesses

      And austere peaks and titan solitudes.

      Once more was near the fair and fated place,

      The borders gleaming with the groves’ delight

      Where first she met the face of Satyavan

      And he saw like one waking into a dream

      Some timeless beauty and reality,

      The moon-gold sweetness of heaven’s earth-born child.

      The past receded and the future neared:

      Far now behind lay Madra’s spacious halls,

      The white carved pillars, the cool dim alcoves,

      The tinged mosaic of the crystal floors,

      The towered pavilions, the wind-rippled pools

      And gardens humming with the murmur of bees,

      Forgotten soon or a pale memory

      The fountain’s plash in the white stone-bound pool,

      The thoughtful noontide’s brooding solemn trance,

      The colonnade’s dream grey in the quiet eve,

      The slow moonrise gliding in front of Night.

      Left far behind were now the faces known,

      The happy silken babble on laughter’s lips

      And the close-clinging clasp of intimate hands

      And adoration’s light in cherished eyes

      Offered to the one sovereign of their life.

      Nature’s primaeval loneliness was here:

      Here only was the voice of bird and beast, –

      The ascetic’s exile in the dim-souled huge

      Inhuman forest far from cheerful sound

      Of man’s blithe converse and his crowded days.

      In a broad eve with one red eye of cloud,

      Through a narrow opening, a green flowered cleft,

      Out of the stare of sky and soil they came

      Into a mighty home of emerald dusk.

      There onward led by a faint brooding path

      Which toiled through the shadow of enormous trunks

      And under arches misers of sunshine,

      They saw low thatched roofs of a hermitage

      Huddled beneath a patch of azure hue

      In a sunlit clearing that seemed the outbreak

      Of