Aurobindo 142 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

Well designed words on defining love
Well worded verses on Savitri's stern love
'If there is a yet happier greater god,
Let him first wear the face of Satyavan
And let his soul be one with him I love;
So let him seek me that I may desire.'
Factual practicality of this Bharat
The husband is the God of his woman...

'For only one heart beats within my breast
And one god sits there throned. Advance, O Death,
Beyond the phantom beauty of this world;
For of its citizens I am not one.
I cherish God the Fire, not God the Dream.'
But Death once more inflicted on her heart
'A bright hallucination are thy thoughts.Line 283 to
There into the hush from which thou cam'st retire.'Line 471

'Thou sendest eagle-poised to meet the sun'
'All thy high dreams were made by Matter's mind
To solace its dull work in Matter's jail,
Its only house where it alone seems true.'
'If Matter fails, all crumbling cracks and falls.
All upon Matter stands as on a rock.'
'All by Death's mercy breathe and live awhile, '
'Accept the brief light that falls upon thy days; '

Oh, what an accuracy of words conceptual
Perfect verses hued with heaven's brush
Dominating, demanding..Death or Savitri?
Savitri ofcourse..quoted again here her words
'For only one heart beats within my breast
And one god sits there throned'.. that's for women....

............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
===========================================

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

Page 614

A prisoner haled by a spiritual cord,
Of thy own sensuous will the ardent slave,
Thou sendest eagle-poised to meet the sun
Words winged with the red splendour of thy heart.

Page 615

Artificer of Ideal and Idea,
Mind, child of Matter in the womb of Life,
To higher levels persuades his parents' steps:
Inapt, they follow ill the daring guide.

But Mind, a glorious traveller in the sky,
Walks lamely on the earth with footsteps slow;
Hardly he can mould the life's rebellious stuff,
Hardly can he hold the galloping hooves of sense:
His thoughts look straight into the very heavens;
They draw their gold from a celestial mine,
His acts work painfully a common ore.

A solid image of reality
Carved out of being to prop the works of Time,
Matter on the firm earth sits strong and sure.
It is the first-born of created things,
It stands the last when mind and life are slain,
And if it ended all would cease to be.
All else is only its outcome or its phase:

Thy soul is a brief flower by the gardener Mind
Created in thy matter's terrain plot;
It perishes with the plant on which it grows,
For from earth's sap it draws its heavenly hue:
Thy thoughts are gleams that pass on Matter's verge,
Thy life a lapsing wave on Matter's sea.

Page 615&616

A careful steward of Truth's limited means,
Treasuring her founded facts from the squandering Power,
It tethers mind to the tent-posts of sense,
To a leaden grey routine clamps Life's caprice
And ties all creatures with the cords of Law.
A vessel of transmuting alchemies,
A glue that sticks together mind and life,
If Matter fails, all crumbling cracks and falls.
All upon Matter stands as on a rock.
Yet this security and guarantor
Pressed for credentials an impostor proves:

Page 616

What seemed most real once, is Nihil's show.
Its figures are snares that trap and prison the sense;
The beginningless Void was its artificer:

Page 617

A huge expanding and contracting Breath
Harboured the fires of the universe:

I formed earth's beauty out of atom and gas,
And built from chemic plasm the living man.

Matter began to hope and think and feel,
Tissue and nerve bore joy and agony.

An ignorant personal God was born in Mind
And to understand invented reason's law,

Page 618

Wisdom and love thou claimest as thy right;
But knowledge in this world is error's mate,

Page 618&619

A sweet secretion from the erotic glands
Flattering and torturing the burning nerves,
Love is a honey and poison in the breast
Drunk by it as the nectar of the gods.

Page619

But not on earth can divine wisdom reign
And not on earth can divine love be found;

This is the illusion of thy mortal heart
Dazzled by a ray of happiness or light.

Impotent to live by their own right divine,
Convinced of their brilliant unreality,
When their supporting ground is cut away,
These children of Matter into Matter die.

Even Matter vanishes into Energy's vague
And Energy is a motion of old Nought.

How shall the Ideal's unsubstantial hues
Be painted stiff on earth's vermilion blur,
A dream within a dream come doubly true?
How shall the will-o'-the-wisp become a star?
The Ideal is a malady of thy mind,
A bright delirium of thy speech and thought,
A strange wine of beauty lifting thee to false sight.

End of Book-10 Canto-2