Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

we come.

      We are the messengers, the occult gods

      Who help men’s drab and heavy ignorant lives

      To wake to beauty and the wonder of things

      Touching them with glory and divinity;

      In evil we light the deathless flame of good

      And hold the torch of knowledge on ignorant roads;

      We are thy will and all men’s will towards Light.

      O human copy and disguise of God

      Who seekst the deity thou keepest hid

      And livest by the Truth thou hast not known,

      Follow the world’s winding highway to its source.

      There in the silence few have ever reached,

      Thou shalt see the Fire burning on the bare stone

      And the deep cavern of thy secret soul.”

      Then Savitri following the great winding road

      Came where it dwindled into a narrow path

      Trod only by rare wounded pilgrim feet.

      A few bright forms emerged from unknown depths

      And looked at her with calm immortal eyes.

      There was no sound to break the brooding hush;

      One felt the silent nearness of the soul.

      End of Canto Three

      Canto Four

      The Triple Soul-Forces

      Here from a low and prone and listless ground

      The passion of the first ascent began;

      A moon-bright face in a sombre cloud of hair,

      A Woman sat in a pale lustrous robe.

      A rugged and ragged soil was her bare seat,

      Beneath her feet a sharp and wounding stone.

      A divine pity on the peaks of the world,

      A spirit touched by the grief of all that lives,

      She looked out far and saw from inner mind

      This questionable world of outward things,

      Of false appearances and plausible shapes,

      This dubious cosmos stretched in the ignorant Void,

      The pangs of earth, the toil and speed of the stars

      And the difficult birth and dolorous end of life.

      Accepting the universe as her body of woe,

      The Mother of the seven sorrows bore

      The seven stabs that pierced her bleeding heart:

      The beauty of sadness lingered on her face,

      Her eyes were dim with the ancient stain of tears.

      Her heart was riven with the world’s agony

      And burdened with the sorrow and struggle in Time,

      An anguished music trailed in her rapt voice.

      Absorbed in a deep compassion’s ecstasy,

      Lifting the mild ray of her patient gaze,

      In soft sweet training words slowly she spoke:

      “O Savitri, I am thy secret soul.

      To share the suffering of the world I came,

      I draw my children’s pangs into my breast.

      I am the nurse of the dolour beneath the stars;

      I am the soul of all who wailing writhe

      Under the ruthless harrow of the Gods.

      I am woman, nurse and slave and beaten beast;

      I tend the hands that gave me cruel blows.

      The hearts that spurned my love and zeal I serve;

      I am the courted queen, the pampered doll,

      I am the giver of the bowl of rice,

      I am the worshipped Angel of the House.

      I am in all that suffers and that cries.

      Mine is the prayer that climbs in vain from earth,

      I am traversed by my creatures’ agonies,

      I am the spirit in a world of pain.

      The scream of tortured flesh and tortured hearts

      Fall’n back on heart and flesh unheard by Heaven

      Has rent with helpless grief and wrath my soul.

      I have seen the peasant burning in his hut,

      I have seen the slashed corpse of the slaughtered child,

      Heard woman’s cry ravished and stripped and haled

      Amid the bayings of the hell-hound mob,

      I have looked on, I had no power to save.

      I have brought no arm of strength to aid or slay;

      God gave me love, he gave me not his force.

      I have shared the toil of the yoked animal drudge

      Pushed by the goad, encouraged by the whip;

      I have shared the fear-filled life of bird and beast,

      Its long hunt for the day’s precarious food,

      Its covert slink and crouch and hungry prowl,

      Its pain and terror seized by beak and claw.

      I have shared the daily life of common men,

      Its petty pleasures and its petty cares,

      Its press of troubles and haggard horde of ills,

      Earth’s trail of sorrow hopeless of relief,

      The unwanted tedious labour without joy,

      And the burden of misery and the strokes of fate.

      I have been pity, leaning over pain

      And the tender smile that heals the wounded heart

      And sympathy making life less hard to bear.

      Man has felt near my unseen face and hands;

      I have become the sufferer and his moan,

      I have lain down with the mangled and the slain,

      I have lived with the prisoner in his dungeon cell.

      Heavy on my shoulders weighs the yoke of Time:

      Nothing refusing of creation’s load,

      I have borne all and know I still must bear:

      Perhaps when the world sinks into a last sleep,

      I too may sleep in dumb eternal peace.

      I have borne the calm indifference of Heaven,

      Watched Nature’s cruelty to suffering things

      While God passed silent by nor turned to help.

      Yet have I cried not out against his will,

      Yet have I not accused his cosmic Law.

      Only to change this great hard world of pain

      A patient prayer has risen from my breast;

      A pallid resignation lights my brow,

      Within me a blind faith and mercy dwell;

      I carry the fire that never can be