Latest / Sri Aurobindo Studies / Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol, Book IX The Book of Eternal Night, Canto 1 Towards the Black Void, pp. 573-577

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Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol, Book IX The Book of Eternal Night, Canto 1 Towards the Black Void, pp. 573-577 · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  All in her made it with that mighty hour, as if the last
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  remnant had been slain by death of the humanity that once was
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  hers, assuming a spiritual wide control, making life see a
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  mirror of heaven's sky. The young divinity in her
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  earthly limbs filled with celestial strength, her mortal
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  part. Over was the haunted pain, the
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  rending fear. Her grief had passed away.
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  Her mind was still, her heart beat quietly with a sovereign
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  force. There came a freedom from the
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  heartstring's clutch. Now all her acts sprang from a
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  godhead's calm. Calmly she laid upon the forest
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  soil the dead who still reposed upon her breast, and bore to
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  turn away from the dead form soul.
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  Now she rose to meet the dreadful God.
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  That mightier spirit turned its mastering gaze on life and
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  things inheritor of a work left to it unfinished from her
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  halting past. When yet the mind, a passionate
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  learner, toiled and I'll shaped instruments were crudely moved,
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  transcended. Now was the poor human rule, a
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  sovereign power? Was there a God like Will?
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  A moment, yet she lingered motionless, and looked down on
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  the dead man at her feet. Then, like a tree recovering
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  from a wind, she raised her noble head.
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  Fronting her gaze, something stood there, unearthly, sombre,
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  grand, a limitless denial of all being that wore the terror and
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  wonder of a shape. In its appalling eyes.
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  The tenebrous form bore the deep pity of destroying gods.
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  A sorrowful irony curved the dreadful lips that speak the
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  word of doom. Eternal night in the dire beauty
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  of an immortal face, pitying a rose, receiving all that lives
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  forever into its fathomless heart.
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  Refuge of creatures from their anguish and world pain.
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  His shape was nothing is made real, His limbs were monuments
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  of transience, and beneath brows of unwearying calm, large God
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  like lids silent beheld the writhing serpent life unmoved.
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  Their timeless, wide, unchanging gaze had seen the unprofitable
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  cycles past, survived the passing of unnumbered stars and
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  sheltered still the same immutable orbs.
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  The two opposed each other with their eyes, woman and universal
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  God around her, piling their void, unbearable loneliness upon
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  her mighty uncompanioned soul. Many inhuman solitudes came
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  close, vacant eternities forbidding hope laid upon her
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  their huge and lifeless look, and to her ears silencing
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  earthly sounds. A sad and formidable voice
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  arose, which seemed the whole adverse worlds.
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  Unclasp it cried thy passionate influence, and relax, O slave of
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  nature, changing tool of changeless law, Who vainly
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  writhes rebellion to my yoke Thy elemental grasp.
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  Weep and forget, Entomb thy passion in its living grave.
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  Leave now the once loved spirits abandoned robe.
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  Pass, lonely, back to thy vain life on earth.
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  It ceased. She moved not, and it spoke
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  again, lowering its mighty key to human chords.
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  Yet a dread cry behind the uttered sounds, echoing all
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  sadness and immortal scorn, moaned like a hunger of far
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  wandering waves. Wilt thou forever keep thy
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  passion at hold thyself a creature doomed like him to
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  pass, denying his soul Death's calm and silent rest.
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  Relax thy grasp. This body is earth's and thine.
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  His spirit now belongs to a greater power.
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  Woman, thy husband suffers. Savitri drew back her heart's
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  forest that clasped his body still where from her lap
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  renounced on the smooth grass softly.
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  It lay as often before in sleep, when from their couch she rose
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  in the white dawn, called by her daily tasks.
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  Now, too, as if called, she rose and stood gathered in lonely
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  strength, like one who drops his mantle for a race and waits, the
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  signal motionlessly swift, She knew not to what course her
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  spirit Above, on the crypt summit of her secret form, like
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  one left Sentinel on a mountain Crest, a fiery footed splendor,
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  poison winged, watched, flaming silent with her voiceless soul,
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  like a still sail upon a windless sea, White, passionless
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  it road and anchored might waiting.
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  What far ridged impulse should arise out of the eternal depths,
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  and cast its surge? Then death.
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  The king lean boundless down, as leans night over tired lands,
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  When evening pails and fading gleams breakdown the horizons
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  walls. Nor yet the dust grows Mystic
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  with the moon. The dim and awful godhead rose
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  erect from his brief, stooping to his touch on earth.
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  And like a dream that wakes out of a dream, forsaking the poor
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  mold of that dead clay, another luminous satyavan arose,
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  starting upright from the recumbent earth, as if someone
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  over viewless border stepped, emerging on the edge of unseen
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  worlds in the earth's day. The silent marvel stood between
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  the mortal woman and the God. Such seemed he, as if one
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  departed, came wearing the light of a celestial shape splendidly
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  alien to the mortal air. The mind sought things long
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  loved, and fell back, foiled from unfamiliar hues, beheld yet
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  longed by the sweet radiant form, unsatisfied, incredulous
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  of its two bright hints of heaven, too strange, the
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  brilliant phantasm to life's clasp, desiring the warm
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  creations of the earth, reared in the ardor of material Suns,
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  the senses seized in vain a glorious shade only the spirit
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  knew, the spirit still, and the heart divine.
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  The old loved heart, though changed between two realms, he
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  stood, not wavering, but fixed in quiet, strong expectancy,
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  Like one who sightless listens for a command.
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  So were they immobile on that earthly field, powers not of
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  earth, though one in human clay. On either side of 1-2 spirits
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  strove. Silence battled with silence,
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  vast with vast. But now the impulse of the path
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  was felt, moving from the silence that supports the stars
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  to touch the confines of the visible world.
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  Luminous, he moved away. Behind him death went slowly
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  with his noiseless tread as seen in dream built fields.
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  A shadowy herdsman glides behind some wanderer from his voiceless
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  herds, and Savitri moved behind eternal death.
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  Her mortal pace was equalled with the gods.
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  Wordless, she travelled in her lover's steps, planting her
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  human feet where his had trod into the perilous silences
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  beyond.