(S 1) | ||
Till then no mournful line had barred this ray.
|
||
(S 2) | ||
On the frail breast of this precarious earth,
|
||
Since her orbed sight in its breath-fastened house,
|
||
Opening in sympathy with happier stars | ||
190 | Where life is not exposed to sorrowful change, | |
Remembered beauty death-claimed lids ignore
|
||
And wondered at this world of fragile forms | ||
Carried on canvas-strips of shimmering Time,
|
||
The impunity of unborn Mights was hers.
|
||
(S 3) | ||
195 | Although she leaned to bear the human load, | |
Her walk kept still the measures of the gods. | ||
(S 4) | ||
Earth’s breath had failed to stain that brilliant glass:
|
||
Unsmeared with the dust of our mortal atmosphere | ||
It still reflected heaven’s spiritual joy. | ||
(S 5) | ||
200 | Almost they saw who lived within her light | |
Her playmate in the sempiternal spheres
|
||
Descended from its unattainable realms | ||
In her attracting advent’s luminous wake, | ||
The white-fire dragon-bird of endless bliss | ||
205 |
Drifting with burning wings above her days:
|
|
Heaven’s tranquil shield guarded the missioned child. | ||
(S 6) | ||
A glowing orbit was her early term,
|
||
Years like gold raiment of the gods that pass;
|
||
Her youth sat throned in calm felicity. | ||
(S 7) | ||
210 | But joy cannot endure until the end: | |
There is a darkness in terrestrial things | ||
That will not suffer long too glad a note.
|
||
(S 8) | ||
On her too closed the inescapable Hand: | ||
The armed Immortal bore the snare of Time.
|
||
(S 9) | ||
215 | One dealt with her who meets the burdened great. | EoS |
(S 10) | ||
Assigner of the ordeal and the path
|
||
Who chooses in this holocaust of the soul
|
||
Death, fall and sorrow as the spirit’s goads,
|
||
The dubious godhead with his torch of pain | ||
220 |
Lit up the chasm of the unfinished world
|
|
And called her to fill with her vast self the abyss. | ||
(S 11) | ||
August and pitiless in his calm outlook,
|
||
Heightening the Eternal’s dreadful strategy, | ||
He measured the difficulty with the might | ||
225 | And dug more deep the gulf that all must cross. | |
(S 12) | ||
Assailing her divinest elements,
|
||
He made her heart kin to the striving human heart | ||
And forced her strength to its appointed road.
|
||
(S 13) | ||
For this she had accepted mortal breath; | EoS | |
230 |
To wrestle with the Shadow she had come
|
|
And must confront the riddle of man’s birth | ||
And life’s brief struggle in dumb Matter’s night. | ||
(S 14) | ||
Whether to bear with Ignorance and death | EoS | |
Or hew the ways of Immortality,
|
||
235 | To win or lose the godlike game for man, | |
Was her soul’s issue thrown with Destiny’s dice.
|
||
(S 15) | ||
But not to submit and suffer was she born; | ||
To lead, to deliver was her glorious part. | ||
(S 16) | ||
Here was no fabric of terrestrial make
|
||
240 | Fit for a day’s use by busy careless Powers. | |
(S 17) | ||
An image fluttering on the screen of Fate, | ||
Half-animated for a passing show, | ||
Or a castaway on the ocean of Desire | EoS | |
Flung to the eddies in a ruthless sport
|
||
245 |
And tossed along the gulfs of Circumstance,
|
|
A creature born to bend beneath the yoke, | ||
A chattel and a plaything of Time’s lords,
|
||
Or one more pawn who comes destined to be pushed
|
||
One slow move forward on a measureless board | ||
250 | In the chess-play of the earth-soul with Doom, — | |
Such is the human figure drawn by Time. | ||
(S 18) | ||
A conscious frame was here, a self-born Force. | ||
(S 19) | ||
In this enigma of the dusk of God,
|
||
This slow and strange uneasy compromise | ||
255 | Of limiting Nature with a limitless Soul, | |
Where all must move between an ordered Chance | ||
And an uncaring blind Necessity, | ||
Too high the fire spiritual dare not blaze. | ||
(S 20) | ||
If once it met the intense original Flame, | EoS | |
260 |
An answering touch might shatter all measures made
|
|
And earth sink down with the weight of the Infinite. | ||
(S 21) | ||
A gaol is this immense material world:
|
||
Across each road stands armed a stone-eyed Law, | ||
At every gate the huge dim sentinels pace.
|
||
(S 22) | ||
265 | A grey tribunal of the Ignorance, | |
An Inquisition of the priests of Night | ||
In judgment sit on the adventurer soul, | ||
And the dual tables and the Karmic norm
|
||
Restrain the Titan in us and the God:
|
||
270 |
Pain with its lash, joy with its silver bribe
|
|
Guard the Wheel’s circling immobility. | ||
(S 23) | ||
A bond is put on the high-climbing mind, | EoS | |
A seal on the too large wide-open heart; | ||
Death stays the journeying discoverer, Life.
|
||
(S 24) | ||
275 | Thus is the throne of the Inconscient safe | |
While the tardy coilings of the aeons pass
|
||
And the Animal browses in the sacred fence
|
||
And the gold Hawk can cross the skies no more. | ||
(S 25) | ||
But one stood up and lit the limitless flame. | ||
(S 26) | ||
280 |
Arraigned by the dark Power that hates all bliss
|
|
In the dire court where life must pay for joy, | ||
Sentenced by the mechanic justicer
|
❊ | |
To the afflicting penalty of man’s hopes, | ||
Her head she bowed not to the stark decree
|
||
285 |
Baring her helpless heart to destiny’s stroke.
|
|
(S 27) | ||
So bows and must the mind-born will in man | ||
Obedient to the statutes fixed of old, | ||
Admitting without appeal the nether gods. | ||
(S 28) | ||
In her the superhuman cast its seed. | ||
(S 29) | ||
290 |
Inapt to fold its mighty wings of dream
|
❊ |
Her spirit refused to hug the common soil, | ||
Or, finding all life’s golden meanings robbed, | ||
Compound with earth, struck from the starry list, | ||
Or quench with black despair the God-given light.
|
||
(S 30) | ||
295 | Accustomed to the eternal and the true, | EoS |
Her being conscious of its divine founts
|
||
Asked not from mortal frailty pain’s relief, | ||
Patched not with failure bargain or compromise.
|
||
(S 31) | ||
A work she had to do, a word to speak: | ||
300 | Writing the unfinished story of her soul | |
In thoughts and actions graved in Nature’s book, | ||
She accepted not to close the luminous page, | ||
Cancel her commerce with eternity, | ||
Or set a signature of weak assent
|
||
305 | To the brute balance of the world’s exchange. | |
(S 32) | ||
A force in her that toiled since earth was made, | ||
Accomplishing in life the great world-plan, | ||
Pursuing after death immortal aims, | ||
Repugned to admit frustration’s barren role,
|
||
310 |
Forfeit the meaning of her birth in Time,
|
|
Obey the government of the casual fact | ||
Or yield her high destiny up to passing Chance.
|
||
(S 33) | ||
In her own self she found her high recourse;
|
EoS | |
She matched with the iron law her sovereign right: | ||
315 | Her single will opposed the cosmic rule. | |
(S 34) | ||
To stay the wheels of Doom this greatness rose. | ||
(S 35) | ||
At the Unseen’s knock upon her hidden gates | ||
Her strength made greater by the lightning’s touch | ||
Awoke from slumber in her heart’s recess.
|
||
(S 36) | ||
320 | It bore the stroke of That which kills and saves. | |
(S 37) | ||
Across the awful march no eye can see, | ||
Barring its dreadful route no will can change,
|
||
She faced the engines of the universe; | ||
A heart stood in the way of the driving wheels: | ||
325 | Its giant workings paused in front of a mind, | |
Its stark conventions met the flame of a soul. | ||
(S 38) | ||
A magic leverage suddenly is caught
|
EoS | |
That moves the veiled Ineffable’s timeless will: | ||
A prayer, a master act, a king idea | ||
330 | Can link man’s strength to a transcendent Force. | |
(S 39) | ||
Then miracle is made the common rule, | ||
One mighty deed can change the course of things; | ||
A lonely thought becomes omnipotent. | ||
(S 40) | ||
All now seems Nature’s massed machinery; | ||
335 | An endless servitude to material rule | |
And long determination’s rigid chain, | ||
Her firm and changeless habits aping Law,
|
||
Her empire of unconscious deft device
|
||
Annul the claim of man’s free human will.
|
||
(S 41) | ||
340 | He too is a machine amid machines; | EoS |
A piston brain pumps out the shapes of thought,
|
||
A beating heart cuts out emotion’s modes; | ||
An insentient energy fabricates a soul. | ||
(S 42) | ||
Or the figure of the world reveals the signs | ||
345 | Of a tied Chance repeating her old steps | |
In circles around Matter’s binding-posts. | ||
(S 43) | ||
A random series of inept events
|
||
To which reason lends illusive sense, is here, | ||
Or the empiric Life’s instinctive search, | ||
350 | Or a vast ignorant mind’s colossal work. | |
(S 44) | ||
But wisdom comes, and vision grows within: | ||
Then Nature’s instrument crowns himself her king; | ||
He feels his witnessing self and conscious power; | ||
His soul steps back and sees the Light supreme. | ||
(S 45) | ||
355 | A Godhead stands behind the brute machine. | |
(S 46) | ||
This truth broke in in a triumph of fire; | EoS | |
A victory was won for God in man, | ||
The deity revealed its hidden face. | ||
(S 47) | ||
The great World-Mother now in her arose: | EoS | |
360 | A living choice reversed fate’s cold dead turn, | |
Affirmed the spirit’s tread on Circumstance, | ||
Pressed back the senseless dire revolving Wheel | ||
And stopped the mute march of Necessity. | ||
(S 48) | ||
A flaming warrior from the eternal peaks | EoS | |
365 | Empowered to force the door denied and closed | |
Smote from Death’s visage its dumb absolute | ||
And burst the bounds of consciousness and Time. |
Book 1, Canto 2 – The Issue, Section 2Savitri Bhavan2020-09-04T10:14:35+00:00