The Mother Reads Selections from Savitri by Sri Aurobindo
Book 2. The Book Of The Traveller Of The Worlds
Canto 6. The Kingdoms And Godheads Of The
Above there gleamed a pondering brow of sky
Tormented, crossed by wings of doubtful haze
. . .
A magic flowed as if of moving scenes
That kept awhile their fugitive delicacy
Of sparing lines limned by an abstract art
In a rare scanted light with faint dream-brush
On a silver background of incertitude.
[p. 173, 174]
* * *
A spirit was there that sought for its own deep self,
Yet was content with fragments pushed in front
And parts of living that belied the Whole
But, pieced together, might one day be true.
[p. 175]
* * *
An Energy of perpetual transience makes
The journey from which no return is sure,
The pilgrimage of Nature to the Unknown.
. . .
A world she made touched by truth’s fleeing hem,
. . .
It seized in imagination and confined
A painted bird of paradise in a cage.
[p. 176, 178 & 179]
* * *
She fashions godlike marvels out of mud;
In the plasm she sets her dumb immortal urge,
Helps the live tissue to think, the closed sense to feel,
Flashes through the frail nerves poignant messages,
In a heart of flesh miraculously loves,
[p. 180]
* * *
Her eternal Lover is her action’s cause;
. . .
Only to attract her veiled companion
And keep him close to her breast in her world-cloak
Lest from her arms he turn to his formless peace,
Is her heart’s business and her clinging care.
[p. 181]
* * *In all who have risen to a greater Life
A voice of unborn things whispers to the ear,
To their eyes visited by some high sunlight
Aspiration shows the image of a crown:
[p. 183]
* * *
All powers of Life towards their godhead tend
. . .
A mastering virtue statuesques the pose,
Or a titan passion goads to a proud unrest:
At Wisdom’s altar they are kings and priests
Or their life a sacrifice to an idol of Power.
[p. 185]
* * *
Armed with a magical and haunted bow
She aimed at a target kept invisible
And ever deemed remote though always near.
[p. 188]
* * *
A Sphinx whose eyes look up to a hidden Sun.
[p. 191]
* * *
Our souls are dragged as with a hidden leash,
Carried from birth to birth, from world to world,
[p. 197]
* * *
These long far files of forward-striving hopes
Lift worshipping eyes to the blue Void called heaven
[p. 199]End of Book 2 Canto 6
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