Aurobindo-25-Savitri-Book -2 Poem by Indira Renganathan

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

'The gusts of Nature were the only law,
Force wrestled with force, but no result remained: '
'A single thinker in an aimless world
Awaiting some tremendous dawn of God,
He saw the purpose in the works of Time.'
'The first writhings of the cosmic serpent Force
Uncoiled from the mystic ring of Matter's trance;
It raised its head in the warm air of life.'

'As yet were only seen foulness and force'
'A heavenly process donned this grey disguise,
'To release the glory of God in Nature's mud.'
'This too he tracked along its hidden stream
And traced its acts to a miraculous fount.'
'A mystic Presence none can probe nor rule, '
'Asks from the body the soul's intimacies'
'Links its mechanic throbs to light and love.'


'A touch of God's rapture in creation's acts,
A lost remembrance of felicity
Lurks still in the dumb roots of death and birth,
The world's senseless beauty mirrors God's delight.'
'That rapture's' 'secret' 'smile'in leaves and flowers
In trees and wind, in birds and beasts and humans
'Forced the unconscious tissues to awake'
'And ask for happiness''And quiver with pain'

'Although on earth are firm established lives'...
'Yet are its roots of will ever the same; '
'These passions are the stuff of which we are made.'
'This was the first cry of the awaking world.'
'It clings around us still and clamps the god.'
It lasts and is the fount of all their life.

............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 137

Only were achieved a nescient grasp and drive
And feelings and instincts knowing not their source,
Sense-pleasures and sense-pangs soon caught, soon lost,
And the brute motion of unthinking lives.


As shines a solitary witness star
That burns apart, Light's lonely sentinel,
In the drift and teeming of a mindless Night,
A single thinker in an aimless world
Awaiting some tremendous dawn of God,
He saw the purpose in the works of Time.


Page 138

It could not cast off yet Night's stiffening sleep
Or wear as yet mind's wonder-flecks and streaks,
Put on its jewelled hood the crown of soul
Or stand erect in the blaze of spirit's sun.

As yet were only seen foulness and force,
The secret crawl of consciousness to light
Through a fertile slime of lust and battening sense,
Beneath the body's crust of thickened self
A tardy fervent working in the dark,
The turbid yeast of Nature's passionate change,
Ferment of the soul's creation out of mire.

Creator of this game of ray and shade
In this sweet and bitter paradoxical life,

Page 139

They come disguised as feelings and desires,
Like weeds upon the surface float awhile
And rise and sink on a somnambulist tide.

Even when reason is born and soul takes form,
In beast and reptile and in thinking man
It lasts and is the fount of all their life.