Savitri by Sri Aurobindo ~ page 3 of Book 1, Canto 1: The symbol of dawn

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Book I: The Book of Beginnings

Canto I: The Symbol Dawn

3

 

And, conquering Nature's disillusioned breast,

Compelled renewed consent to see and feel.

A thought was sown in the unsounded Void,

A sense was born within the darkness' depths,

A memory quivered in the heart of Time

As if a soul long dead were moved to live:

But the oblivion that succeeds the fall,

Had blotted the crowded tablets of the past,

And all that was destroyed must be rebuilt

And old experience laboured out once more.

All can be done if the god-touch is there.

A hope stole in that hardly dared to be

Amid the Night's forlorn indifference.

As if solicited in an alien world

With timid and hazardous instinctive grace,

Orphaned and driven out to seek a home,

An errant marvel with no place to live,

Into a far-off nook of heaven there came

A slow miraculous gesture's dim appeal.

The persistent thrill of a transfiguring touch

Persuaded the inert black quietude

And beauty and wonder disturbed the fields of God.

A wandering hand of pale enchanted light

That glowed along a fading moment's brink,

Fixed with gold panel and opalescent hinge

A gate of dreams ajar on mystery's verge.

One lucent corner windowing hidden things

Forced the world's blind immensity to sight.

The darkness failed and slipped like a falling cloak

From the reclining body of a god.

Then through the pallid rift that seemed at first

Hardly enough for a trickle from the suns,

Outpoured the revelation and the flame.

The brief perpetual sign recurred above.

A glamour from unreached transcendences

Iridescent with the glory of the Unseen,

 

***Lynette***

 

 

Heart to heart we meet with words,

Apart we walk our ways

Forever immortal

Our stories told

Enchantment

From all our days.