(S 1)    
  IN THE little hermitage in the forest’s heart,  
  In the sunlight and the moonlight and the dark  
  The daily human life went plodding on  
  Even as before with its small unchanging works  
5 And its spare outward body of routine  
  And happy quiet of ascetic peace.  
(S 2)    
  The old beauty smiled of the terrestrial scene;  
  She too was her old gracious self to men.  
(S 3)    
  The Ancient Mothe clutched her child to her breast  
10 Pressing her close in her environing arms,  
  As if earth ever the same could for ever keep  
  The living spirit and body in her clasp,  
  As if death were not there nor end nor change.  
(S 4)    
  Accustomed only to read outward signs EoS
15 None saw aught new in her, none divined her state;  
  They saw a person where was only God’s vast,  
  A still being or a mighty nothingness.  
(S 5)    
  To all she was the same perfect Savitri:  
  A greatness and a sweetness and a light  
20 Poured out from her upon her little world.  
(S 6)    
  Life showed to all the same familiar face,  
  Her acts followed the old unaltered round,  
  She spoke the words that she was wont to speak  
  And did the things that she had always done.  
(S 7)    
25 Her eyes looked out on earth’s unchanging face,  
  Around her soul’s muteness all moved as of old;  
  A vacant consciousness watched from within,  
  Empty of all but bare Reality.  
(S 8)    
  There was no will behind the word and act, EoS
30 No thought formed in her brain to guide the speech:  
  An impersonal emptiness walked and spoke in her,  
  Something perhaps unfelt, unseen, unknown  
  Guarded the body for its future work,  
  Or Nature moved in her old stream of force.  
(S 9)    
35 Perhaps she bore made conscious in her breast EoS
  The miraculous Nihil, origin of our souls  
  And source and sum of the vast world’s events,  
  The womb and grave of thought, a cipher of God,  
  A zero circle of being’s totality.  
(S 10)    
40 It used her speech and acted in her acts,  
  It was beauty in her limbs, life in her breath;  
  The original Mystery wore her human face.  
(S 11)    
  Thus was she lost within to separate self; EoS
  Her mortal ego perished in God’s night.  
(S 12)    
45 Only a body was left, the ego’s shell EoS
  Afloat mid drift and foam of the world-sea,  
  A sea of dream watched by a motionless sense  
  In a figure of unreal reality.  
(S 13)    
  An impersonal foresight could already see, — EoS
50 In the unthinking knowledge of the spirit  
  Even now it seemed nigh done, inevitable, —  
  The individual die, the cosmos pass;  
  These gone, the transcendental grew a myth,  
  The Holy Ghost without the Father and Son,  
55 Or, a substratum of what once had been,  
  Being that never willed to bear a world  
  Restored to its original loneliness,  
  Impassive, sole, silent, intangible.  
(S 14)    
  Yet all was not extinct in this deep loss;  
60 The being travelled not towards nothingness.  
(S 15)    
  There was some high surpassing Secrecy, EoS
  And when she sat alone with Satyavan,  
  Her moveless mind with his that searched and strove,  
  In the hush of the profound and intimate night  
65 She turned to the face of a veiled voiceless Truth  
  Hid in the dumb recesses of the heart  
  Or waiting beyond the last peak climbed by Thought, —  
  Unseen itself it sees the struggling world  
  And prompts our quest, but cares not to be found, —  
70 Out of that distant Vast came a reply.  
(S 16)    
  Something unknown, unreached, inscrutable  
  Sent down the messages of its bodiless Light,  
  Cast lightning flashes of a thought not ours  
  Crossing the immobile silence of her mind:  
75 In its might of irresponsible sovereignty EoS
  It seized on speech to give those flamings shape,  
  Made beat the heart of wisdom in a word  
  And spoke immortal things through mortal lips.  
(S 17)    
  Or, listening to the sages of the woods,  
80 In question and in answer broke from her  
  High strange revealings impossible to men,  
  Something or someone secret and remote  
  Took hold of her body for his mystic use,  
  Her mouth was seized to channel ineffable truths,  
85 Knowledge unthinkable found an utterance.  
(S 18)    
  Astonished by a new enlightenment,  
  Invaded by a streak of the Absolute,,  
  They marvelled at her, for she seemed to know  
  What they had only glimpsed at times afar.  
(S 19)    
90 These thoughts were formed not in her listening brain, EoS
  Her vacant heart was like a stringless harp;  
  Impassive the body claimed not its own voice,  
  But let the luminous greatness through it pass.  
(S 20)    
  A dual Power at being’s occult poles  
95 Still acted, nameless and invisible:  
  Her divine emptiness was their instrument.  
(S 21)    
  Inconscient Nature dealt with the world it had made,  
  And using still the body’s instruments  
  Slipped through the conscious void she had become;  
100 The superconscient Mystery through that Void  
  Missioned its word to touch the thoughts of men.  
(S 22)    
  As yet this great impersonal speech was rare. EoS
(S 23)    
  But now the unmoving wide spiritual space  
  In which her mind survived tranquil and bare,  
105 Admitted a traveller from the cosmic breadths:  
  A thought came through draped as an outer voice.  
(S 24)    
  It called not for the witness of the mind,  
  It spoke not to the hushed receiving heart;  
  It came direct to the pure perception’s seat,  
110 An only centre now of consciousness,  
  If centre could be where all seemed only space;  
  No more shut in by body’s walls and gates EoS
  Her being, a circle without circumference,  
  Already now surpassed all cosmic bounds  
115 And more and more spread into infinity.  
(S 25)    
  This being was its own unbounded world,  
  A world without form or feature or circumstance;  
  It had no ground, no wall, no roof of thought,  
  Yet saw itself and looked on all around  
120 In a silence motionless and illimitable.  
(S 26)    
  There was no person there, no centred mind,  
  No seat of feeling on which beat events  
  Or objects wrought and shaped reaction’s stress.  
(S 27)    
  There was no motion in this inner world, EoS
125 All was a still and even infinity.  
(S 28)    
  In her the Unseen, the Unknown waited his hour.