Aurobindo 72 Savitri Book 4 Poem by Indira Renganathan

An appreciation on Savitri-
Book Four: The Book of Birth and Quest
Canto One: The Birth and Childhood of the Flame
Words within inverted commas are Aurobindo's


'A Maenad of the cycles of desire'
Around a Light she must not dare to touch'
'Amid the ambiguous stillness of the stars
She moved towards some undisclosed event'
'In ceaseless motion round the purple rim
Day after day sped by like coloured spokes, '
The seasons drew in linked significant dance
The symbol pageant of the changing year.

Across the burning languor of the soil
Paced Summer with his pomp of violent noons
Next through its fiery swoon or clotted knot
Rain-tide burst in upon torn wings of heat,
'Armies of revolution crossed the time-field,
The clouds' unending march besieged the world,
Tempests' pronunciamentos claimed the sky
And thunder drums announced the embattled gods.'

'Downpour and drip and seeping mist swayed all
And turned dry soil to bog and reeking mud:
Earth was a quagmire, heaven a dismal block.'
'Then a last massive deluge thrashed dead mire
And a subsiding mutter left all still, '
' Earth's mood now changed; she lay in lulled repose, '
' A wide and tranquil air remembered peace, '
'A calmness neared as of the approach of God, '

'Three thoughtful seasons passed with shining tread
And scanning one by one the pregnant hours
Watched for a flame that lurked in luminous depths,
The vigil of some mighty birth to come.'
'Autumn led in the glory of her moons
And dreamed in the splendour of her lotus pools'

............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 4 Canto 1

Page 349

Hastening towards a far-off unknown goal
Earth followed the endless journey of the Sun.

A mind but half-awake in the swing of the void
On the bosom of Inconscience dreamed out life

Across the burning languor of the soil
Paced Summer with his pomp of violent noons
And stamped his tyranny of torrid light
And the blue seal of a great burnished sky.

Page 350

A traveller from unquiet neighbouring seas,
The dense-maned monsoon rode neighing through earth's hours:
Thick now the emissary javelins:
Enormous lightnings split the horizon's rim
And, hurled from the quarters as from contending camps,
Married heaven's edges steep and bare and blind:

A surge and hiss and onset of huge rain,
The long straight sleet-drift, clamours of winged storm-charge,
Throngs of wind-faces, rushing of wind-feet
Hurrying swept through the prone afflicted plains:
Heaven's waters trailed and dribbled through the drowned land.
Then all was a swift stride, a sibilant race,
Or all was tempest's shout and water's fall.

A dimness sagged on the grey floor of day,
Its dingy sprawling length joined morn to eve,
Wallowing in sludge and shower it reached black dark.
Day a half darkness wore as its dull dress.
Light looked into dawn's tarnished glass and met
Its own face there, twin to a half-lit night's:

Even when no turmoil vexed air's sombre rest,
Or a faint ray glimmered through weeping clouds
As a sad smile gleams veiled by returning tears,
All promised brightness failed at once denied
Or, soon condemned, died like a brief-lived hope.

Page 351

Earth's mood now changed; she lay in lulled repose,
................................................
Earth was the comrade of a happy sun.

A dream loitered in the dumb mind of Space,
Time opened its chambers of felicity,
An exaltation entered and a hope: