A Spiritual Biography of Savitri
22: A Scout of Victory
Even when she bent to meet earth’s
intimacies
Her spirit kept the stature of the
gods;
It stooped but was not lost in
Matter's reign.
A world translated was her gleaming
mind,
And marvel-mooned bright crowding
fantasies
Fed with spiritual sustenance of
dreams
The ideal goddess in her house of
gold.
Aware of forms to which our eyes
are closed,
Conscious of nearnesses we cannot
feel,
The Power within her shaped her
moulding sense
In deeper figures than our surface
types.
An invisible sunlight ran within
her veins
And flooded her brain with heavenly
brilliancies
That woke a wider sight than earth
could know.
Outlined in the sincerity of that
ray
Her springing childlike thoughts
were richly turned
Into luminous patterns of her soul’s
deep truth,
And from her eyes she cast another
look
On all around her than man's
ignorant view.
All objects were to her shapes of
living selves
And she perceived a message from
her kin
In each awakening touch of outward
things.
Each was a symbol power, a vivid
flash
In the circuit of infinities
half-known;
Nothing was alien or inanimate,
Nothing without its meaning or its
call.
For with a greater Nature she was
one.
As from the soil sprang glory of
branch and flower,
As from the animal's life rose
thinking man,
A new epiphany appeared in her.
A mind of light, a life of rhythmic
force,
A body instinct with hidden
divinity
Prepared an image of the coming
god;
And when the slow rhyme of the
expanding years
And the rich murmurous swarm-work
of the days
Had honey-packed her sense and
filled her limbs,
Accomplishing the moon-orb of her
grace,
Self-guarded in the silence of her
strength
Her solitary greatness was not
less.
Nearer the godhead to the surface
pressed,
A sun replacing childhood’s nebula
Sovereign in a blue and lonely sky.
Upward it rose to grasp the human
scene:
The strong Inhabitant turned to
watch her field,
A lovelier light assumed her spirit
brow
And sweet and solemn grew her
musing gaze;
Celestial-human deep warm slumbrous
fires
Woke in the long fringed glory of
her eyes
Like altar-burnings in a mysteried
shrine.
Out of those crystal windows
gleamed a will
That brought a large significance
to life.
Holding her forehead's candid
stainless space
Behind the student arch a noble
power
Of wisdom looked from light on
transient things.
A scout of victory in a vigil
tower,
Her aspiration called high destiny
down;
A silent warrior paced in her city
of strength
Inviolate, guarding Truth's diamond
throne.
A nectarous haloed moon her
passionate heart
Loved all and spoke no word and
made no sign,
But kept her bosom’s rapturous
secrecy
A blissful ardent moved and
voiceless world.
Proud, swift and joyful ran the
wave of life
Within her like a stream in
Many high gods dwelt in one
beautiful home;
Yet was her nature’s orb a perfect
whole,
Harmonious like a chant with many
tones,
Immense and various like a
universe.
The body that held this greatness
seemed almost
An image made of heaven's
transparent light.
Its charm recalled things seen in
vision’s hours,
A golden bridge spanning a faery
flood,
A moon-touched palm tree single by
a lake
Companion of the wide and
glimmering peace,
A murmur as of leaves in
Moving when feet of the Immortals
pass,
A fiery halo over sleeping hills,
A strange and starry head alone in
Night.