(S 1) | ||
A wide unquiet mist of seeking Space, | ||
A rayless region swallowed in vague swathes, | ||
That seemed, unnamed, unbodied and unhoused, | ||
A swaddled visionless and formless mind, | ||
155 | Asked for a body to translate its soul. | |
(S 2) | ||
Its prayer denied, it fumbled after thought. | ||
(S 3) | ||
As yet not powered to think, hardly to live, | ||
It opened into a weird and pigmy world | ||
Where this unhappy magic had its source. | ||
(S 4) | ||
160 | On dim confines where Life and Matter meet | |
He wandered among things half-seen, half-guessed, | ||
Pursued by ungrasped beginnings and lost ends. | ||
(S 5) | ||
There life was born but died before it could live. | ||
(S 6) | ||
There was no solid ground, no constant drift; | ||
165 | Only some flame of mindless Will had power. | |
(S 7) | ||
Himself was dim to himself, half-felt, obscure, | ||
As if in a struggle of the Void to be. | ||
(S 8) | ||
In strange domains where all was living sense | ||
But mastering thought was not nor cause nor rule, | ||
170 | Only a crude child-heart cried for toys of bliss, | |
Mind flickered, a disordered infant glow, | ||
And random shapeless energies drove towards form | ||
And took each wisp-fire for a guiding sun. | ||
(S 9) | ||
This blindfold force could place no thinking step; | ||
175 | Asking for light she followed darkness’ clue. | |
(S 10) | ||
An inconscient Power groped towards consciousness, | ||
Matter smitten by Matter glimmered to sense, | ||
Blind contacts, slow reactions beat out sparks | ||
Of instinct from a cloaked subliminal bed, | ||
180 | Sensations crowded, dumb substitutes for thought, | |
Perception answered Nature’s wakening blows | ||
But still was a mechanical response, | ||
A jerk, a leap, a start in Nature’s dream, | ||
And rude unchastened impulses jostling ran | ||
185 | Heedless of every motion but their own | |
And, darkling, clashed with darker than themselves, | ||
Free in a world of settled anarchy. | ||
(S 11) | ||
The need to exist, the instinct to survive | ||
Engrossed the tense precarious moment’s will | ||
190 | And an unseeing desire felt out for food. | |
(S 12) | ||
The gusts of Nature were the only law, | ||
Force wrestled with force, but no result remained: | ||
Only were achieved a nescient grasp and drive | ||
And feelings and instincts knowing not their source, | ||
195 | Sense-pleasures and sense-pangs soon caught, soon lost, | |
And the brute motion of unthinking lives. | ||
(S 13) | ||
It was a vain unnecessary world | ||
Whose will to be brought poor and sad results | ||
And meaningless suffering and a grey unease. | ||
(S 14) | ||
200 | Nothing seemed worth the labour to become. |
Book 2, Canto 4 – The Kingdoms of the Little Life, Section 3Savitri Bhavan2019-05-03T10:35:21+00:00