Explorations in Savitri

A mightier influx filled the oblivious clay: A lamp was lit, a sacred image made. A mediating ray had touched the earth Bridging the gulf between man's mind and God's; Its brightness linked our transience to the Unknown.

A Mother-wisdom works in Nature's breast To pour delight on the heart of toil and want And press perfection on life's stumbling powers, Impose heaven-sentience on the obscure abyss And make dumb Matter conscious of its God.

At once she seemed to found a mightier race. Arrived upon the strange and dubious globe The child remembering inly a far home Lived guarded in her spirit's luminous cell, Alone mid men in her diviner kind.

"Even when she bent to meet earth's intimacies Her spirit kept the stature of the gods; It stooped but was not lost in Matter's reign."

She laid the secrecies of her heart's deep muse Upon the altar of the Wonderful; Her hours were a ritual in a timeless fane; Her acts became gestures of sacrifice.

The splendour of her native royalty, Her greatness and her sweetness and her bliss, Her might to possess and her vast power to love: Earth made a stepping-stone to conquer heaven

'A friend and yet too great wholly to know, She walked in their front towards a greater light, Their leader and queen over their hearts and souls, One close to their bosoms, yet divine and far.'

Their lives replied to hers, moved at her words: They felt a godhead and obeyed a call, Answered to her lead and did her work in the world; Their lives, their natures moved compelled by hers

A single lamp lit in perfection's house, A bright pure image in a priestless shrine, Midst those encircling lives her spirit dwelt, Apart in herself until her hour of fate.

"O Force-compelled, Fate-driven earth-born race, O petty adventurers in an infinite world And prisoners of a dwarf humanity, How long will you tread the circling tracks of mind Around your little self and petty things?

The gods are still too few in mortal forms.” The Voice withdrew into its hidden skies. But like a shining answer from the gods Approached through sun-bright spaces Savitri.

“O spirit, traveller of eternity, Who cam'st from the immortal spaces here Armed for the splendid hazard of thy life To set thy conquering foot on Chance and Time

Challenge the ordeal of the immense disguise. Ascend from Nature to divinity's heights; Face the high gods, crowned with felicity, Then meet a greater god, thy self beyond Time.

Vaguely or with a flash of sudden hints Her acts recalled a line of bygone power, Even her motion's purpose was not new: Traveller to a prefigured high event, She seemed to her remembering witness soul

Across wide noons and glowing afternoons, She met with Nature and with human forms And listened to the voices of the world; Driven from within she followed her long road

The quieted all-seeking mind could feel, At rest from its blind outwardness of will, The unwearied clasp of her mute patient love And know for a soul the mother of our forms.

Awake in candid dawn or darkness mooned, To the still touch inclined the daughter of Flame Drank in hushed splendour between tranquil lids And felt the kinship of eternal calm.