Latest / Sri Aurobindo Studies / Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol, by Sri Aurobindo, Book IX The Book of Eternal Night, Canto 1 Towards the Black Void, pp. 571-573

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Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol, by Sri Aurobindo, Book IX The Book of Eternal Night, Canto 1 Towards the Black Void, pp. 571-573 · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  So was she left alone in the huge wood, surrounded by a dim,
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  unthinking world, her husband's corpse on her forsaken breast.
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  In her vast silent spirit, motionless, she measured not her
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  loss with helpless thoughts, nor rent with tears the marble seals
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  of pain. She rose, not yet to face the
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  dreadful God over the body she loved.
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  Her soul leaned out in a great stillness, without stir or
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  voice, as if her mind had died with Satyavan, but still the
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  human heart in her beat on, aware still of his being near to
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  hers. Closely she clasped to her the
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  mute, lifeless form, as though to guard the oneness they had
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  been and keep the spirit still within its frame.
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  Then suddenly there came on her the change which in tremendous
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  moments of our lives can overtake sometimes the human
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  soul and hold it up towards its luminous source.
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  The veil is torn. The thinker is no more.
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  Only the Spirit sees, and all is known.
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  Then a calm power, seated above our brows is seen unshaken by
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  our thoughts and deeds. Its stillness bears the voices
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  of the world. Immobile it moves.
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  Nature looks on life. It shapes immutably its far seen
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  ends untouched and tranquil amid error and tears, and measureless
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  above our striving wills. Its gaze controls the turbulent
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  whirl of things to mate with the glory it sees.
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  The spirit grows. The voice of life is tuned to
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  infinite sounds. The moments on great wings of
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  lightning come, and God like thoughts surprise the mind of
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  earth. Into the soul's splendor and
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  intensity a Crescent of miraculous birth is tossed,
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  whose horn of mystery floats in a bright void as into a heaven
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  of strength and silence. Thought is ravished.
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  All this living mortal clay is seized, and in a swift and fiery
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  flood of touches shaped by a harmonist unseen, a new sight
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  comes. New voices in US form a body of
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  the music of the gods. Immortal yearnings without name
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  leaped down large quiverings of Godhead, seeking run and weave
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  upon a poisoned field of calm, A high and lonely ecstasy of will.
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  This in a moment's depths was born in her now to the limitless
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  gaze disclosed that sees things barred from human thinking's
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  earthly lids, The spirit who had hidden in nature's sword out of
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  his luminous nest within the worlds like a vast fire it
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  climbed the skies of night. Thus were the cords of self
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  oblivion, torn like one who looks up to far heights she saw,
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  ancient and strong as on a windless summit above her where
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  she had worked in her lone mind, laboring apart in a soul tower
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  of self, the source of all which she had seemed or wrought.
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  A power projected into cosmic space, A slow embodiment of the
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  Ionic will, a starry fragment of the eternal truth, the
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  passionate instrument of an unmoved power.
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  A presence was there that filled the listening world.
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  A central all assumed her boundless life, a sovereignty, a
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  silence and a swiftness. One brooded over abysses.
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  Who was she? As in a coric robe of unheard
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  sounds a force descended, trailing endless lights, linking
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  times seconds to Infinity. Illimitably it girt the earth
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  and her. It sank into her soul, and she
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  was changed. Then, like a thought fulfilled
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  by some great word that mightiness assumed a symbol form
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  her beings, spaces quivered with its touch.
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  It covered her as with immortal wings on its lips, the curve of
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  the unuttered truth, a Halo of wisdom's lightnings for its
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  crown. It entered the Mystic Lotus in
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  her head. 1000 Peddled home of power and light, immortal leader
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  of her mortality, doer of her works and fountain of her words.
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  Invulnerable by time, omnipotent.
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  It stood above her, calm, immobile, mute.