Aurobindo 140 Savitri Book 10 Poem by Indira Renganathan

An appreciation on Savitri-
Book Ten:The Book of the Double Twilight
Canto Two:The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal
Words within inverted commas are Aurobindo's

'Then pealed the calm inexorable voice: '
'Abolishing hope, cancelling life's golden truths,
Fatal its accents smote the trembling air.'
'Prisoner of Nature, many-visioned spirit, Line 7 to
And souls emerged into mortality.'Line 199
'The subtle marvellous mind of man has feigned,
This is the world from which thy yearnings came.'
True, Truth here is awesome awfulness...

'This is the stuff from which the ideal is formed:
Its builder is thought, its base the heart's desire,
But nothing real answers to their call.
The ideal dwells not in heaven, nor on the earth,
A bright delirium of man's ardour of hope
Drunk with the wine of its own fantasy.
It is a brilliant shadow's dreamy trail.'
Serf of his own illusory self the human...

'This angel in thy body thou callst love,
Who shapes his wings from thy emotion's hues, '
'It is a passion of thy yearning cells,
It is flesh that calls to flesh to serve its lust; '
'It is thy mind that seeks an answering mind'
'It is thy life that asks a human prop'
'This beast thou dreamst immortal and a god.'
Strong enough Death pealing but Savitri more stronger...

'Earth only is there and not some heavenly source.
If heavens there are they are veiled in their own light,
If a Truth eternal somewhere reigns unknown,
It burns in a tremendous void of God;
For truth shines far from the falsehoods of the world; '
True to today's world-life..save us oh Savitri.....

............My consciousness this moment,
O'Guru, I'm in awe....in invincible heights
Ineffable Thee embellishing poetic creation
My inquisitive apprehension, erring Thee may opine
May there so, let Savitri in my self arise
Aroused there so be knowledge and fortune

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Note; Some more inspiring descriptive and
informative lines from Book 10 Canto 2


Page 607

That lovely world swam thin and frail, most like
Some pearly evanescent farewell gleam
On the faint verge of dusk in moonless eves.

Prophesying glories it shall never see,
It labours delicately among its dreams.
Behold this fleeing of light-tasselled shapes,
Aerial raiment of unbodied gods;

A rapture of things that never can be born,
Hope chants to hope a bright immortal choir;
Cloud satisfies cloud, phantom to longing phantom
Leans sweetly, sweetly is clasped or sweetly chased.

Page 608

A beast of prey that pauses in its prowl,
It crouches under a bush in splendid flower
To seize a heart and body for its food:

All here emerges born from Nothingness;
Encircled it lasts by the emptiness of Space,
Awhile upheld by an unknowing Force,
Then crumbles back into its parent Nought:
Only the mute Alone can for ever be.


Page 609&610

How can the heavens come down to unhappy earth
Or the eternal lodge in drifting time?
How shall the Ideal tread earth's dolorous soil
Where life is only a labour and a hope,
A child of Matter and by Matter fed,
A fire flaming low in Nature's grate,
A wave that breaks upon a shore in Time,
A journey's toilsome trudge with death for goal?
The Avatars have lived and died in vain,
Vain was the sage's thought, the prophet's voice;
In vain is seen the shining upward Way.
Earth lies unchanged beneath the circling sun;


Page 610

What is this love thy thought has deified,
This sacred legend and immortal myth?
It is a conscious yearning of thy flesh,
It is a glorious burning of thy nerves,
A rose of dream-splendour petalling thy mind,
A great red rapture and torture of thy heart.

A ravishing edge of sweetness and of pain,
A thrill in its yearning makes it seem divine,


Page 610&611

When love breaks suddenly into the life
At first man steps into a world of the sun;
In his passion he feels his heavenly element:
But only a fine sunlit patch of earth
The marvellous aspect took of heaven's outburst;
The snake is there and the worm in the heart of the rose.
A word, a moment's act can slay the god;

Page 611

Love cannot live by heavenly food alone,
Only on sap of earth can it survive.