Aurobindo-20-Savitri-Book -2 Poem by Indira Renganathan

An appreciation on Savitri-
Book II The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds
Canto III The Glory and the Fall of Life
Words within inverted commas are Aurobindo's

'He crossed the limits of embodied Mind
And entered wide obscure disputed fields'
'There life is the manifest Incalculable, '
'A vexed disturbance in the eternal Calm,
An impulse and passion of the Infinite.'
'Careless of suffering, heedless of sin and fall,
She wrestles with danger and discovery
In the unexplored expanses of the soul.'

'As saw some inner mind, so life was shaped: '
'A huge inconsequence was her action's law,
As if all possibility must be drained,
And anguish and bliss were pastimes of the heart'
'In a gallop of thunder-hooved vicissitudes
She swept through the race-fields of Circumstance, '
A scene was planned for all her numberless moods
But none could offer a pure felicity;

'Yet pure and bright from the Timeless was her birth, '
'Her moods are faces of the Infinite:
Beauty and happiness are her native right,
And endless Bliss is her eternal home.'
'This now revealed its antique face of joy,
A sudden disclosure to the heart of grief
Tempting it to endure and long and hope.'
'He saw the image of a happier state.'

'Above him in a new celestial vault
'An archipelago of laughter and fire,
Swam stars apart in a rippled sea of sky.
'Towered spirals, magic rings of vivid hue
And gleaming spheres of strange felicity
Floated through distance like a symbol world.'


............My consciousness this moment,
O'Guru, I'm in awe....in invincible heights
Ineffable Thee embellishing poetic creation
My inquisitive apprehension, erring Thee may opine
May there so, let Savitri in my self arise
Aroused there so be knowledge and fortune
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Note: Some more inspiring, descriptive and informative
lines from Book 2 canto 3


Page 116

As one who meets the face of the Unknown,
A questioner with none to give reply,
Attracted to a problem never solved,
Always uncertain of the ground he trod,
Always drawn on to an inconstant goal
He travelled through a land peopled by doubts
In shifting confines on a quaking base.

A vagrancy was there that brooked no home,
A journey of countless paths without a close.


There life is the manifest Incalculable,
A movement of unquiet seas, a long
And venturous leap of spirit into Space,
A vexed disturbance in the eternal Calm,
An impulse and passion of the Infinite.

Unshepherded by the fear that walks through Time,
Undaunted by Fate that dogs and Chance that springs,
She accepts disaster as a common risk;

Page 119

As through a magic television's glass
Outlined to some magnifying inner eye
They shone like images thrown from a far scene
Too high and glad for mortal lids to seize.

Page 120

In dream and trance and muse before our eyes,
Across a subtle vision's inner field,
Wide rapturous landscapes fleeting from the sight,
The figures of the perfect kingdom pass
And behind them leave a shining memory's trail.

Imagined scenes or great eternal worlds,
Dream-caught or sensed, they touch our hearts with their depths;
Unreal-seeming, yet more real than life,
Happier than happiness, truer than things true,
If dreams these were or captured images,
Dream's truth made false earth's vain realities.