A Spiritual Biography of Savitri

20: Once more that Will put on an Earthly Shape

 

In this high signal moment of the gods

Answering earth’s yearning and her cry for bliss

A greatness from our other countries came.

 

A silence in the noise of earthly things

Immutably revealed the secret Word,

A mightier influx filled the oblivious clay:

A lamp was lit, a sacred image made.

 

A mediating ray has touched the earth

Bridging the gulf between man’s mind and God’s;

Translating heaven into a human shape

Its brightness linked our transience to the Unknown.

 

A spirit of its celestial source aware

Descended into earth’s imperfect mould

And wept not fallen to mortality,

But looked on all with large and tranquil eyes.

 

One had returned from the transcendent planes

And bore anew the load of mortal breath,

Who had striven of old with our darkness and our pain;

She took again her divine unfinished task:

Survivor of death and the aeonic years,

Once more with her fathomless heart she fronted Time.

 

Again there was renewed, again revealed

The ancient closeness by earth-vision veiled,

The secret contact broken off in Time,

A consanguinity of earth and heaven,

Between the human portion toiling here

And an as yet unborn and limitless Force.

 

Again the mystic deep attempt began,

The daring wager of the cosmic game.

 

For since upon this blind and whirling globe

Earth-plasm first quivered with the illumining mind

And life invaded the material sheath

Afflicting Inconscience with the need to feel,

Since in Infinity’s silence woke a word,

A Mother-wisdom works in Nature’s breast

To pour delight on the heart of toil and want

And press perfection on life’s stumbling powers,

Impose heaven-sentience on the obscure abyss

And make dumb Matter conscious of its God…

 

She keeps her will that hopes to divinise clay;

Failure cannot repress, defeat o’erthrow;

Time cannot weary her nor the Void subdue,

The ages have not made her passion less;

No victory she admits of Death or Fate.

 

Always she drives the souls to new attempt;

Always her magical infinitude

Forces to aspire the inert brute elements;

As one who has all infinity to waste,

She scatters the seed of the Eternal’s strength

On a half-animate and crumbling mould,

Plants heaven’s delight in the heart’s passionate mire,

Pours godhead’s seekings into a bare beast frame,

Hides immortality in a mask of death.

 

Once more that Will put on an earthly shape.

 
 
Savitri, pp. 353-54