Aurobindo-3savitri-Book -1 Poem by Indira Renganathan

The following are selected verses
from the great epic poem Savitri by Sri.Aurobindo.
This is not an analysis but just an appreciation.
I am not a philosopher, nor I know yoga.
But do we need to be so to
enjoy reading poetry.No.Yet I admit
it was very much difficult to understand
the yoga-part of this great epic.

Sri.Aurobindo's poetic style is exuberantly beautiful
I have tried here to go with the theme mainly.
Many more volumes of appreciation need to be written
specially on his poeticbeauty.I am proud of my luck
to haveattempted at this epic.I wish everyone reads Savitri
and enjoy the trance therein.May peace be with us all.
-Indira Renganathan

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An appreciation on Savitri-
Book-1 Book Of Beginnings-Canto-1 Symbol Dawn
Words within inverted commas are Aurobindo's


Her awaiting mind 'upon silence'marge'
Like my inside self hampered and unfree
Awaiting a lit-exit on its dark fence
Awake awaiting a live spirit fluorescent
'Between the first and the last Nothingness.'
Whirling in destiny-held whorls of rebirths
Like the vaccilating resetsof my heart
Awaiting Earth wheeling through recycled ignorance.

Timely a 'breach' 'somewhere' 'stirred' and 'began'
'A scout in a reconnaissance from the sun'
Whom my closed soul in my pallid mind
For ever yearn to uplift as if from quicksand
Glinted to resow the 'forgotten bliss'.
An entranced threshold 'glowed' in opalescence
'An instant's visitor the godhead shone'
To write 'the lines of a significant myth'

'The waking ear of Nature heard her steps'
Unbelievable bliss caressed her waking rising
Which my dormant consciousness still wishing for..
And there, mighty Savitri rose truth-cloaked
'Akin to the eternity whence she came'
All against earthly godly transience
But'trapped in the gin of earthly destinies
Awaiting her ordeal's hour abode'

'Unhelped she must foresee and dread and dare'
A way, even the modern woman should fare..
One fatal noon when came and doomed her
Lost was Savitri's soul and life
'Immobile in herself, she gathered force.
That 'was the day when Satyavan must die.'

............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-1 canto-1

Page 1

The huge foreboding mind of Night, alone
In her unlit temple of eternity,
Lay stretched immobile upon Silence' marge.


In the sombre symbol of her eyeless muse
The abysm of the unbodied Infinite;
A fathomless zero occupied the world.


A power of fallen boundless self awake
Between the first and the last Nothingness,


The impassive skies were neutral, empty, still.


Page 2

A throe that came and left a quivering trace,
Gave room for an old tired want unfilled,
At peace in its subconscient moonless cave
To raise its head and look for absent light,
Straining closed eyes of vanished memory,
Like one who searches for a bygone self
And only meets the corpse of his desire.


As if a childlike finger laid on a cheek
Reminded of the endless need in things
The heedless Mother of the universe,
An infant longing clutched the sombre Vast.



A long lone line of hesitating hue
Like a vague smile tempting a desert heart
Troubled the far rim of life's obscure sleep.


Page 3

A memory quivered in the heart of Time
As if a soul long dead were moved to live:
But the oblivion that succeeds the fall,
Had blotted the crowded tablets of the past


A hope stole in that hardly dared to be
Amid the Night's forlorn indifference.
As if solicited in an alien world
With timid and hazardous instinctive grace,
Orphaned and driven out to seek a home,
An errant marvel with no place to live,
Into a far-off nook of heaven there came
A slow miraculous gesture's dim appeal.


The persistent thrill of a transfiguring touch
Persuaded the inert black quietude
And beauty and wonder disturbed the fields of God.
A wandering hand of pale enchanted light
That glowed along a fading moment's brink,
Fixed with gold panel and opalescent hinge
A gate of dreams ajar on mystery's verge.


Page 4

A glamour from unreached transcendences
Iridescent with the glory of the Unseen,
A message from the unknown immortal Light
Ablaze upon creation's quivering edge,
Dawn built her aura of magnificent hues
And buried its seed of grandeur in the hours.


On life's thin border awhile the Vision stood
And bent over earth's pondering forehead curve.


Interpreting a recondite beauty and bliss
In colour's hieroglyphs of mystic sense,
It wrote the lines of a significant myth
Telling of a greatness of spiritual dawns,
A brilliant code penned with the sky for page.


Air was a vibrant link between earth and heaven;
The wide-winged hymn of a great priestly wind
Arose and failed upon the altar hills;
The high boughs prayed in a revealing sky.


The call that wakes the leap of human mind,
Its chequered eager motion of pursuit,
Its fluttering-hued illusion of desire,
Visited her heart like a sweet alien note.


Page 5

Here where our half-lit ignorance skirts the gulfs
On the dumb bosom of the ambiguous earth,
Here where one knows not even the step in front
And Truth has her throne on the shadowy back of doubt,


As when a soul draws near the sill of birth,
Adjoining mortal time to Timelessness,
A spark of deity lost in Matter's crypt
Its lustre vanishes in the inconscient planes,
That transitory glow of magic fire
So now dissolved in bright accustomed air.


Page 7

Inflicting on the heights the abysm's law,
It sullies with its mire heaven's messengers:
Its thorns of fallen nature are the defence
It turns against the saviour hands of Grace;
It meets the sons of God with death and p

Page 8

As one who watching over men left blind
Takes up the load of an unwitting race,
Harbouring a foe whom with her heart she must feed,
Unknown her act, unknown the doom she faced,
Unhelped she must foresee and dread and dare.


End Of Book 1-Canto 1