THE MOTHER’S SAVITRI: Book 2 Canto 3

The Mother Reads Selections from Savitri by Sri Aurobindo

Book 2. The Book Of The Traveller Of The Worlds

Canto 3. The Glory And The Fall Of Life

In a gallop of thunder-hooved vicissitudes
She swept through the race-fields of Circumstance,
Or, swaying, she tossed between her heights and deeps,
Uplifted or broken on Time’s incessant wheel.
[p. 117]
* * *
Above him in a new celestial vault
Other than the heavens beheld by mortal eyes,
As on a fretted ceiling of the gods,
An archipelago of laughter and fire,
Swam stars apart in a rippled sea of sky.
[p. 119]
* * *
In a swift eternal moment fixed there live
Or ever recalled come back to longing eyes
Calm heavens of imperishable Light,
Illumined continents of violet peace,
Oceans and rivers of the mirth of God
And griefless countries under purple suns.
[p. 120]
* * *
The nude God-children in their play-fields ran
Smiting the winds with splendour and with speed;
[p. 126]
* * *
When earth was built in the unconscious Void
And nothing was save a material scene,
Identified with sea and sky and stone
Her young gods yearned for the release of souls
Asleep in objects, vague, inanimate.
[p. 129]
* * *
Life heard the call and left her native light.
Overflowing from her bright magnificent plane
On the rigid coil and sprawl of mortal Space,
Here too the gracious great-winged Angel poured
Her splendour and her swiftness and her bliss,
Hoping to fill a fair new world with joy.
[p. 130]
* * *
But while the magic breath was on its way,
Before her gifts could reach our prisoned hearts,
A dark ambiguous Presence questioned all.
[p. 130]

End of Book 2 Canto 3

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