THE MOTHER’S SAVITRI: Book 2 Canto 2

The Mother Reads Selections from Savitri by Sri Aurobindo

Book 2. The Book Of The Traveller Of The Worlds

Canto 2. The Kingdom Of Subtle Matter

He came into a magic crystal air
And found a life that lived not by the flesh,
A light that made visible immaterial things.
A fine degree in wonder’s hierarchy,
The kingdom of subtle Matter’s faery craft
Outlined against a sky of vivid hues,
Leaping out of a splendour-trance and haze,
The wizard revelation of its front.
[p. 103]
* * *
This brilliant roof of our descending plane,
Intercepting the free boon of heaven’s air,
Admits small inrushes of a mighty breath
Or fragrant circuits through gold lattices;
. . .
And bright dews drip from the Immortal’s sky.
[p. 104]
* * *
In rooms of the young divinity of power
And early play of the eternal Child
The embodiments of his outwinging thoughts
Laved in a bright everlasting wonder’s tints
And lulled by whispers of that lucid air
Take dream-hued rest like birds on timeless trees
Before they dive to float on earth-time’s sea.
[p. 104]
* * *
This wonder-world with all its radiant boon
Of vision and inviolate happiness,
Only for expression cares and perfect form;
. . .
It lends beauty to the terror of the gulfs
And fascinating eyes to perilous Gods,
Invests with grace the demon and the snake.
[p. 106]
* * *
A heaven of creative truths above,
A cosmos of harmonious dreams between,
A chaos of dissolving forms below,
It plunges lost in our inconscient base.
Out of its fall our denser Matter came.
[p. 107]
* * *
This mire must harbour the orchid and the rose,
From her blind unwilling substance must emerge
A beauty that belongs to happier spheres.
[p. 107]
* * *
In us too the intuitive Fire can burn;
An agent Light, it is coiled in our folded hearts,
On the celestial levels is its home:
Descending, it can bring those heavens here.
[p. 112]
* * *
Admired for the bright finality of its lines
A blue horizon limited the soul;
[p. 114]
* * *
Life in its boundaries lingered satisfied
. . .
The beautiful body of a soul at ease,
Like one who laughs in sweet and sunlit groves,
Childlike she swung in her gold cradle of joy.
[p. 114]

End of Book 2 Canto 2

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