THE MOTHER’S SAVITRI: Book 4 Canto 2

The Mother Reads Selections from Savitri by Sri Aurobindo

Book 4. The Book of Birth and Quest

Canto 2. The Growth of the Flame

A land of mountains and wide sun-beat plains
And giant rivers pacing to vast seas,
A field of creation and spiritual hush,
Silence swallowing life’s acts into the deeps,
Of thought’s transcendent climb and heavenward leap,
A brooding world of reverie and trance,
Filled with the mightiest works of God and man,
Where Nature seemed a dream of the Divine
And beauty and grace and grandeur had their home,
Harboured the childhood of the incarnate Flame.
[p. 359]
* * *
Intense philosophies pointed earth to heaven
. . .
Sculpture and painting concentrated sense
Upon an inner vision’s motionless verge,
. . .
The architecture of the Infinite
Discovered here its inward-musing shapes
Captured into wide breadths of soaring stone:
Music brought down celestial yearnings, song
Held the merged heart absorbed in rapturous depths,
. . .
The world-interpreting movements of the dance
Moulded idea and mood to a rhythmic sway
[pp. 360-361]
* * *
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.
[p. 363]
* * *
They were moved by her towards great unknown things,
. . .
Some turned to her against their nature’s bent;
Divided between wonder and revolt,
. . .
Impatient subjects, their tied longing hearts
Hugging the bonds close of which they most complained,
Murmured at a yoke they would have wept to lose,
The splendid yoke of her beauty and her love:
[pp. 364-365]
* * *
The Force in her drew earth’s subhuman broods;
And to her spirit’s large and free delight
She joined the ardent-hued magnificent lives
Of animal and bird and flower and tree.
They answered to her with the simple heart.
[p. 366]
* * *
A key to a Light still kept in being’s core,
The sun-word of an ancient mystery’s sense,
Her name ran murmuring on the lips of men
[p. 367]
* * *
No equal heart came close to join her heart,
. . .
Midst those encircling lives her spirit dwelt,
Apart in herself until her hour of fate.
[pp. 367-368]

End of Book 4 Canto 2

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