Aurobindo-24-Savitri-Book -2 Poem by Indira Renganathan

An appreciation on Savitri
Book IIThe Book of the Traveller of the Worlds
Canto IVThe Kingdoms of the Little Life
Words within inverted commas are Aurobindo's

'It woke from happy torpor a blind Force
Compelling it to sense and seek and feel.'
'A groping consciousness in a voiceless world,
A guideless sense was given her for her road; '
'In her substance of unthinking mute soul-strength
That cannot utter what its depths divine,
Awoke a blind necessity to know.
The chain that bound her she made her instrument; '

'Inflicting on the body desire and hope, '
'She brought into Matter's dull tenacity '
'Her wandering unsure steps, her cry for change.'
'Adorer of a joy without a name,
In her obscure cathedral of delight
To dim dwarf gods she offers secret rites.'
True, a fear-ride on a blindfolded path
'Matter dissatisfies, she turns to Mind; '

'Only a glimmer sometimes splits mind's sky
Justifying the ambiguous providence
That makes of night a path to unknown dawns
'A foundling of the Gods she wanders here
Like a child-soul left near the gates of Hell
Fumbling through fog in search of Paradise.'
Truth is rarely cloaked in glittering attire
In here Thine word-woven brocade glitters


'On dim confines where Life and Matter meet
He wandered among things half-seen, half-guessed,
Pursued by ungrasped beginnings and lost ends.'
'Himself was dim to himself, half-felt, obscure,
As if in a struggle of the Void to be.'
'This blindfold force could place no thinking step; '...

............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 2 Canto 4


Page 133

An eyeless Power that sees no more its aim,
......Life cast her seed in the body's indolent mould;

Alive with her yearning woke the inert cell,
In the heart she kindled a fire of passion and need,
Amid the deep calm of inanimate things
Arose her great voice of toil and prayer and strife.

Thought was withheld and nothing now she knew,
But all the unknown was hers to feel and clasp.

Page 134

Instinct was hers, the chrysalis of Truth,
And effort and growth and striving nescience.

She conquers earth, her field, then claims the heavens.

Page 135

In Nescience began her mighty task,
In Ignorance she pursues the unfinished work,
For knowledge gropes, but meets not Wisdom's face.

Life here was intimate with Death and Night
And ate Death's food that she might breathe awhile;
She was their inmate and adopted waif.
Accepting subconscience, in dumb darkness' reign
A sojourner, she hoped not any more.

An unhappy face of falsity made true,
A contradiction of our divine birth,
Indifferent to beauty and to light,
Parading she flaunted her animal disgrace

Page 135&136

Fallen, glorying in the vileness of her state,
The grovel of a strength once half divine,
The graceless squalor of her beast desires,
The staring visage of her ignorance,
The naked body of her poverty.

Page 136

A wide unquiet mist of seeking Space,
A rayless region swallowed in vague swathes,
That seemed, unnamed, unbodied and unhoused,
A swaddled visionless and formless mind,
Asked for a body to translate its soul.
Its prayer denied, it fumbled after thought.

Only a crude child-heart cried for toys of bliss,
Mind flickered, a disordered infant glow,
And random shapeless energies drove towards form
And took each wisp-fire for a guiding sun.