Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

spirit leans down to break the knot of earth,

      Amorous of oneness without thought or sign

      To cast down wall and fence, to strip heaven bare,

      See with the large eye of infinity,

      Unweave the stars and into silence pass.”

      In an immense and world-destroying pause

      She heard a million creatures cry to her.

      Through the tremendous stillness of her thoughts

      Immeasurably the woman’s nature spoke:

      “Thy oneness, Lord, in many approaching hearts,

      My sweet infinity of thy numberless souls.”

      Mightily retreating like a sea in ebb

      A third time swelled the great admonishing call:

      “I spread abroad the refuge of my wings.

      Out of its incommunicable deeps

      My power looks forth of mightiest splendour, stilled

      Into its majesty of sleep, withdrawn

      Above the dreadful whirlings of the world.”

      A sob of things was answer to the voice,

      And passionately the woman’s heart replied:

      “Thy energy, Lord, to seize on woman and man,

      To take all things and creatures in their grief

      And gather them into a mother’s arms.”

      Solemn and distant like a seraph’s lyre

      A last great time the warning sound was heard:

      “I open the wide eye of solitude

      To uncover the voiceless rapture of my bliss,

      Where in a pure and exquisite hush it lies

      Motionless in its slumber of ecstasy,

      Resting from the sweet madness of the dance

      Out of whose beat the throb of hearts was born.”

      Breaking the Silence with appeal and cry

      A hymn of adoration tireless climbed,

      A music beat of winged uniting souls,

      Then all the woman yearningly replied:

      “Thy embrace which rends the living knot of pain,

      Thy joy, O Lord, in which all creatures breathe,

      Thy magic flowing waters of deep love,

      Thy sweetness give to me for earth and men.”

      Then after silence a still blissful cry

      Began, such as arose from the Infinite

      When the first whisperings of a strange delight

      Imagined in its deep the joy to seek,

      The passion to discover and to touch,

      The enamoured laugh which rhymed the chanting worlds:

      “O beautiful body of the incarnate Word,

      Thy thoughts are mine, I have spoken with thy voice.

      My will is thine, what thou hast chosen I choose:

      All thou hast asked I give to earth and men.

      All shall be written out in destiny’s book

      By my trustee of thought and plan and act,

      The executor of my will, eternal Time.

      But since thou hast refused my maimless Calm

      And turned from my termless peace in which is expunged

      The visage of Space and the shape of Time is lost,

      And from happy extinction of thy separate self

      In my uncompanioned lone eternity, –

      For not for thee the nameless worldless Nought,

      Annihilation of thy living soul

      And the end of thought and hope and life and love

      In the blank measureless Unknowable, –

      I lay my hands upon thy soul of flame,

      I lay my hands upon thy heart of love,

      I yoke thee to my power of work in Time.

      Because thou hast obeyed my timeless will,

      Because thou hast chosen to share earth’s struggle and fate

      And leaned in pity over earth-bound men

      And turned aside to help and yearned to save,

      I bind by thy heart’s passion thy heart to mine

      And lay my splendid yoke upon thy soul.

      Now will I do in thee my marvellous works.

      I will fasten thy nature with my cords of strength,

      Subdue to my delight thy spirit’s limbs

      And make thee a vivid knot of all my bliss

      And build in thee my proud and crystal home.

      Thy days shall be my shafts of power and light,

      Thy nights my starry mysteries of joy

      And all my clouds lie tangled in thy hair

      And all my springtides marry in thy mouth.

      O Sun-Word, thou shalt raise the earth-soul to Light

      And bring down God into the lives of men;

      Earth shall be my work-chamber and my house,

      My garden of life to plant a seed divine.

      When all thy work in human time is done

      The mind of earth shall be a home of light,

      The life of earth a tree growing towards heaven,

      The body of earth a tabernacle of God.

      Awakened from the mortal’s ignorance

      Men shall be lit with the Eternal’s ray

      And the glory of my sun-lift in their thoughts

      And feel in their hearts the sweetness of my love

      And in their acts my Power’s miraculous drive.

      My will shall be the meaning of their days;

      Living for me, by me, in me they shall live.

      In the heart of my creation’s mystery

      I will enact the drama of thy soul,

      Inscribe the long romance of Thee and Me.

      I will pursue thee across the centuries;

      Thou shalt be hunted through the world by love,

      Naked of ignorance’ protecting veil

      And without covert from my radiant gods.

      No shape shall screen thee from my divine desire,

      Nowhere shalt thou escape my living eyes.

      In the nudity of thy discovered self,

      In a bare identity with all that is,

      Disrobed of thy covering of humanity,

      Divested of the dense veil of human thought,

      Made one with every mind and body and heart,

      Made one with all Nature and with Self and God,

      Summing in thy single soul my mystic world