A Spiritual Biography of Savitri

19: The Eternal steps into Time

 

A Maenad of the cycles of desire

Around a Light she must not dare to touch,

Hastening towards a far-off unknown goal

Earth followed the endless journey of the Sun.

 

A mind but half-awake in the swing of the void

On the bosom of Inconscience dreamed out life

And bore this finite world of thought and deed

Across the immobile trance of the Infinite.

 

A vast immutable silence with her ran:

Prisoner of speed upon a jewelled wheel,

She communed with the mystic heart in Space.

 

Amid the ambiguous stillness of the stars

She moved towards some undisclosed event

And her rhythm measured the long whirl of Time.

 

In ceaseless motion round the purple rim

Day after day sped by like coloured spokes,

And through a glamour of shifting hues of air

The seasons drew in linked significant dance

The symbol pageant of the changing year.

 

Across the burning languor of the soil

Paced Summer with his pomp of violent noons

And stamped his tyranny of torrid light

And the blue seal of a great burnished sky.

 

Next through its fiery swoon or clotted knot

Rain-tide burst in upon torn wings of heat,

Startled with lightnings air's unquiet drowse,

Lashed with life-giving streams the torpid soil,

Overcast with flare and sound and storm-winged dark

The star-defended doors of heaven's dim sleep,

Or from the gold eye of her paramour

Covered with packed cloud-veils the earth's brown face.

 

Armies of revolution crossed the time-field,

The clouds' unending march besieged the world,

Tempests' pronunciamentos claimed the sky

And thunder drums announced the embattled gods.

 

A traveller from unquiet neighbouring seas

The dense-maned monsoon rode neighing through earth's hours:

Thick now the emissary javelins:

Enormous lightnings split the horizon's rim

And, hurled from the quarters as from contending camps,

Married heaven's edges steep and bare and blind:

A surge and hiss and onset of huge rain,

The long straight sleet-drift, clamours of winged storm-charge,

Throngs of wind-faces, rushing of wind-feet

Hurrying swept through the prone afflicted plains:

Heaven's waters trailed and dribbled through the drowned land.

 

Then all was a swift stride, a sibilant race,

Or all was tempest's shout and water's fall.

 

A dimness sagged on the grey floor of day,

Its dingy sprawling length joined morn to eve,

Wallowing in sludge and shower it reached black dark.

 

Day a half darkness wore as its dull dress.

 

Light looked into dawn's tarnished glass and met

Its own face there, twin to a half-lit night's:

Downpour and drip and seeping mist swayed all

And turned dry soil to bog and reeking mud:

Earth was a quagmire, heaven a dismal block.

 

None saw through dank drenched weeks the dungeon sun.

 

Even when no turmoil vexed air's sombre rest,

Or a faint ray glimmered through weeping clouds

As a sad smile gleams veiled by returning tears,

All promised brightness failed at once denied

Or, soon condemned, died like a brief-lived hope.

 

Then a last massive deluge thrashed dead mire

And a subsiding mutter left all still,

Or only the muddy creep of sinking floods

Or only a whisper and green toss of trees.

 

Earth's mood now changed; she lay in lulled repose,

The hours went by with slow contented tread:

A wide and tranquil air remembered peace,

Earth was the comrade of a happy sun.

 

A calmness neared as of the approach of God,

A light of musing trance lit soil and sky

And an identity and ecstasy

Filled meditation's solitary heart.

 

A dream loitered in the dumb mind of Space,

Time opened its chambers of felicity,

An exaltation entered and a hope:

An inmost self looked up to a heavenlier height,

An inmost thought kindled a hidden flame

And the inner sight adored an unseen sun.

 

Three thoughtful seasons passed with shining tread

And scanning one by one the pregnant hours

Watched for a flame that lurked in luminous depths,

The vigil of some mighty birth to come.

 

Autumn led in the glory of her moons

And dreamed in the splendour of her lotus pools

And Winter and Dew-time laid their calm cool hands

On Nature's bosom still in a half sleep

And deepened with hues of lax and mellow ease

The tranquil beauty of the waning year.

 

Then Spring, an ardent lover, leaped through leaves

And caught the earth-bride in his eager clasp;

His advent was a fire of irised hues,

His arms were a circle of the arrival of joy.

 

His voice was a call to the Transcendent's sphere

Whose secret touch upon our mortal lives

Keeps ever new the thrill that made the world,

Remoulds an ancient sweetness to new shapes

And guards intact unchanged by death and Time

The answer of our hearts to Nature's charm

And keeps for ever new, yet still the same,

The throb that ever wakes to the old delight

And beauty and rapture and the joy to live.

 

His coming brought the magic and the spell,

At his touch life's tired heart grew glad and young;

He made joy a willing prisoner in her breast.

 

His grasp was a young god's upon earth's limbs:

Changed by the passion of his divine outbreak

He made her body beautiful with his kiss.

 

Impatient for felicity he came,

High-fluting with the coïl's happy voice,

His peacock turban trailing on the trees;

His breath was a warm summons to delight,

The dense voluptuous azure was his gaze.

 

A soft celestial urge surprised the blood

Rich with the instinct of God's sensuous joys;

Revealed in beauty, a cadence was abroad

Insistent on the rapture-thrill in life:

Immortal movements touched the fleeting hours.

 

A godlike packed intensity of sense

Made it a passionate pleasure even to breathe;

All sights and voices wove a single charm.

 

The life of the enchanted globe became

A storm of sweetness and of light and song,

A revel of colour and of ecstasy,

A hymn of rays, a litany of cries:

A strain of choral priestly music sang

And, swung on the swaying censer of the trees,

A sacrifice of perfume filled the hours.

 

Asocas burned in crimson spots of flame,

Pure like the breath of an unstained desire

White jasmines haunted the enamoured air,

Pale mango-blossoms fed the liquid voice

Of the love-maddened coïl, and the brown bee

Muttered in fragrance mid the honey-buds.

 

The sunlight was a great god's golden smile.

 

All Nature was at beauty's festival.

 

In this high signal moment of the gods

Answering earth's yearning and her cry for bliss,

A greatness from our other countries came.

 
 
Savitri, pp. 349-53