Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

Ray,

      And even this transient body then can feel

      Ideal love and flawless happiness

      And laughter of the heart’s sweetness and delight

      Freed from the rude and tragic hold of Time,

      And beauty and the rhythmic feet of the hours.

      This in high realms touches immortal kind;

      What here is in the bud has blossomed there.

      There is the secrecy of the House of Flame,

      The blaze of godlike thought and golden bliss,

      The rapt idealism of heavenly sense;

      There are the wonderful voices, the sun-laugh,

      A gurgling eddy in rivers of God’s joy,

      And the mysteried vineyards of the gold moon-wine,

      All the fire and sweetness of which hardly here

      A brilliant shadow visits mortal life.

      Although are witnessed there the joys of Time,

      Pressed on the bosom the Immortal’s touch is felt,

      Heard are the flutings of the Infinite.

      Here upon earth are early awakenings,

      Moments that tremble in an air divine,

      And grown upon the yearning of her soil

      Time’s sun-flowers’ gaze at gold Eternity:

      There are the imperishable beatitudes.

      A million lotuses swaying on one stem,

      World after coloured and ecstatic world

      Climbs towards some far unseen epiphany.

      On the other side of the eternal stairs

      The mighty kingdoms of the deathless Flame

      Aspired to reach the Being’s absolutes.

      Out of the sorrow and darkness of the world,

      Out of the depths where life and thought are tombed,

      Lonely mounts up to heaven the deathless Flame.

      In a veiled Nature’s hallowed secrecies

      It burns for ever on the altar Mind,

      Its priests the souls of dedicated gods,

      Humanity its house of sacrifice.

      Once kindled, never can its flamings cease.

      A fire along the mystic paths of earth,

      It rises through the mortal’s hemisphere,

      Till borne by runners of the Day and Dusk

      It enters the occult eternal Light

      And clambers whitening to the invisible Throne.

      Its worlds are steps of an ascending Force:

      A dream of giant contours, titan lines,

      Homes of unfallen and illumined Might,

      Heavens of unchanging Good pure and unborn,

      Heights of the grandeur of Truth’s ageless ray,

      As in a symbol sky they start to view

      And call our souls into a vaster air.

      On their summits they bear up the sleepless Flame;

      Dreaming of a mysterious Beyond,

      Transcendent of the paths of Fate and Time,

      They point above themselves with index peaks

      Through a pale-sapphire ether of god-mind

      Towards some gold Infinite’s apocalypse.

      A thunder rolling mid the hills of God,

      Tireless, severe is their tremendous Voice:

      Exceeding us, to exceed ourselves they call

      And bid us rise incessantly above.

      Far from our eager reach those summits live,

      Too lofty for our mortal strength and height,

      Hardly in a dire ecstasy of toil

      Climbed by the spirit’s naked athlete will.

      Austere, intolerant they claim from us

      Efforts too lasting for our mortal nerve

      Our hearts cannot cleave to nor our flesh support;

      Only the Eternal’s strength in us can dare

      To attempt the immense adventure of that climb

      And the sacrifice of all we cherish here.

      Our human knowledge is a candle burnt

      On a dim altar to a sun-vast Truth;

      Man’s virtue, a coarse-spun ill-fitting dress,

      Apparels wooden images of Good;

      Passionate and blinded, bleeding, stained with mire

      His energy stumbles towards a deathless Force.

      An imperfection dogs our highest strength;

      Portions and pale reflections are our share.

      Happy the worlds that have not felt our fall,

      Where Will is one with Truth and Good with Power;

      Impoverished not by earth-mind’s indigence,

      They keep God’s natural breath of mightiness,

      His bare spontaneous swift intensities;

      There is his great transparent mirror, Self,

      And there his sovereign autarchy of bliss

      In which immortal natures have their part,

      Heirs and cosharers of divinity.

      He through the Ideal’s kingdoms moved at will,

      Accepted their beauty and their greatness bore,

      Partook of the glories of their wonder fields,

      But passed nor stayed beneath their splendour’s rule.

      All there was an intense but partial light.

      In each a seraph-winged high-browed Idea

      United all knowledge by one master thought,

      Persuaded all action to one golden sense,

      All powers subjected to a single power

      And made a world where it could reign alone,

      An absolute ideal’s perfect home.

      Insignia of their victory and their faith,

      They offered to the Traveller at their gates

      A quenchless flame or an unfading flower,

      Emblem of a high kingdom’s privilege.

      A glorious shining Angel of the Way

      Presented to the seeking of the soul

      The sweetness and the might of an idea,

      Each deemed Truth’s intimate fount and summit force,

      The heart of the meaning of the universe,

      Perfection’s key, passport to Paradise.

      Yet were there regions where these absolutes met

      And made a circle of bliss with married hands;

      Light stood embraced by light, fire wedded fire,

      But