Book-4-Study-Canto-2

Canto Two

The Growth of the Flame 

Summary
Great influences and ancient Godheads watch over the child Savitri as she grows up in a land of beauty, grace and grandeur. Earth’s wisdom communes with her still heart: her mind leaps beyond thought and opens the horizons of the unknown and the infinite for man.

Her environment is rich in the fields of philosophy, sculpture, architecture, music, painting, dance, poetry, crafts, science. She assimilates their essence but feels their inadequacy and seeks to realise the larger and higher glories waiting to manifest. She extends herself to embrace all around and lift them Godward.

But few respond to her call and fewer still feel her divinity. They cannot keep pace with her and fall back to their little human measure. She is their leader, close to their hearts yet far from their nature. They adore her, cling to her, but they cannot rise to her heights. Some seek to draw upon her for their own petty satisfactions, and rebel against her yoke of love which they do not want to lose either.

None, however, is there who can stand up her equal and mate. She has to stoop to all and hold their souls as a Mother. She has to live within, alone. She often feels one with the sub-human world in Nature that responds readily to her.

In a small circle she lives and learns, without any link with the wider world. But there is a growing sense of expectation in the air, word gets round and men begin to discover her and her name gets abroad. Still, she is admired and adored from afar. None can stand up her equal. She has to remain alone till her hour of fate arrives.

Land of Beauty and Grandeur

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.

The child Savitri, the embodied divine flame, grows up in a land lavishly endowed by Nature, physically, aesthetically and spiritually. There peaks are as abundant as plains, racing rivers join calm seas, Silence and Action exist side by side, beauty, grace and grandeur are native—a veritable paradise on earth.

Future Godheads Come

Over her watched millennial influences
And the deep godheads of a grandiose past
Looked on her and saw the future’s godheads come
As if this magnet drew their powers unseen.

Ancient influences keep watch on the growing child. The godheads of the rich past of the earth those whose work is over—look on her and see new godheads who are to fashion the future coming to the earth as if invisibly pulled by the magnet that is Savitri.

Rents Man’s Horizons

Earth’s brooding wisdom spoke to her still breast;
Mounting from mind’s last peaks to mate with gods,
Making earth’s brilliant thoughts a springing board
To dive into the cosmic vastnesses,
The knowledge of the thinker and the seer
Saw the unseen and thought the unthinkable,
Opened the enormous doors of the unknown,
Rent Man’s horizons into infinity.

Earth communicates her occult wisdom to Savitri in the depths of her being. She soars in her thoughts and goes beyond the reaches of the human mind; she expands her consciousness and delves into the cosmic vastitudes. She thinks what is unthinkable by others, sees what is not seen by others. She forces the huge doors of the Unknown realms and thrusts back the limited horizons of man into the limitless.

Lent Shoreless Sweep

A shoreless sweep was lent to the mortal’s acts,
And art and beauty sprang from the human depths;
Nature and soul vied in nobility.

By her presence and inner action human activity in that land gains an unlimited range; art and beauty begin to arise from the depths of the being, not from the mental or vital superficies as they do in the common world of man. Not merely the soul, but nature too breathes and emanates a sublime nobility.

Rich Culture’s Tones

Ethics the human keyed to imitate heaven;
The harmony of a rich culture’s tones
Refined the sense and magnified its reach
To hear the unheard and glimpse the invisible
And taught the soul to soar beyond things known
Inspiring life to greaten and break its bounds
Aspiring to the Immortals’ unseen world.

Human ethics are raised to resemble the verities of heaven. In .the milieu of this developed culture the sense is refined and its range enlarged so as to hear what is normally unheard and see what is normally unseen; the soul is trained to aspire to things beyond the known and the familiar, thereby inspiring mortal life to heighten itself and break out of its limits in order to reach out to the unseen world of the Immortals.

On Heights near to the Sun

Leaving earth’s safety daring wings of Mind
Bore her above the trodden fields of thought
Crossing the mystic seas of the Beyond
To live on eagle heights near to the Sun.

There wisdom sits on her eternal throne.

Savitri’s adventurous mind leaps beyond the safe and trodden tracks of human thought, crosses the wide expanses of the higher consciousness that are baffling to mental reason, and takes her to the peaks that are close to the Sun of Truth. There on these altitudes reigns wisdom on her eternal throne.

Upon the Altar of the Wonderful

All her life’s turns led her to symbol doors
Admitting to secret Powers that were her kin;
Adept of truth, initiate of bliss,
A mystic acolyte trained in Nature’s school,
Aware of the marvel of created things
She laid the secrecies of her heart’s deep muse
Upon the altar of the Wonderful;
Her hours were ritual in a timeless fane;
Her acts became gestures of sacrifice.

Every event in life, every circumstance and movement turn into openings for contact with the occult Powers with whom she has affinity of origin. For Savitri the whole life is a delightful sacrifice: she is at once the wise guide who knows the truth, the priestess who is initiated in bliss, the divine acolyte who is trained in the school of Nature; seized with the wonder of creation, she pours the oblation of her inmost contemplation upon the alter of the Wonderful, the Divine adbhuta. Her hours are unbroken successions of ritual worship in the eternal temple of her existence, her acts significant gestures in her sacrifice.

Word as Mantra (I)

Invested with a rhythm of higher spheres
The word was used as a hieratic means
For the release of the imprisoned spirit
Into communion with its comrade gods.

As for her speech it is a sacred power. Every word is a mantra charged with the rhythm of the higher worlds, a holy means for the liberation of the soul imprisoned in living Matter into communion with the Gods who are its native companions.

Vibrant with the rhythms of the supernal, the Mantra is a power that effects the release of the being from the holds of Ignorance and links it with the Gods above who are truly its companions in the Journey of the Spirit.

Word as Mantra (II)

Or it helped to beat out new expressive forms
Of that which labours in the heart of life,
Some immemorial Soul in men and things,
Seeker of the Unknown and the Unborn
Carrying a light from the Ineffable
To rend the veil of the last mysteries.

Or the Word helps in shaping new forms of expression for the Soul labouring in the midst of life to unveil the ultimate secrets of the Creation—the ancient Soul in the Creation ever in quest of the Reality that is unknown and unborn, instinct with a light from the Inexpressible.

Philosophies

Intense philosophies pointed earth to heaven
Or on foundations broad as cosmic Space
Upraised the earth-mind to superhuman heights.

In this land philosophies are not mere speculations weaving unsubstantial, narrow systems of thought leading nowhere. They are a force directing the aspiration of man on earth to God beyond; they are broad-based as the universe itself—and as inclusive—and they raise the mind of the earth to peaks that surpass the human ranges.

Sculpture and Painting

Overpassing lines that please the outward eyes
But hide the sight of that which lives within
Sculpture and painting concentrated sense
Upon an inner vision’s motionless verge,
Revealed a figure of the invisible,
Unveiled all Nature’s meaning in a form,
Or caught into a body the Divine.

Sculpture and painting are not confined to their outer forms which may be pleasing to the eye but often conceal their true significance within. They direct the perceiving sense to the governing motif within; they make visible in form something of the invisible Reality; they exhibit to sight the occult plan of Nature or present the very Divine in a concrete form.

Architecture and Music

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,
Linking the human with the cosmic cry;

The wide and high architecture captures as it were the patterns that take shape in the brooding Idea of the Infinite in its mood for manifestation.

The music embodies on earth the aspiration for heaven. The song holds the melted heart absorbed in the depths of rapture and joins the human note of anguish and call to the cosmic cry.

Dance and Crafts

The world-interpreting movements of the dance
Moulded idea and mood to a rhythmic sway
And posture; crafts minute in subtle lines
Eternised a swift moment’s memory
Or showed in a carving’s sweep, a cup’s design
The underlying patterns of the unseen:

Dance interprets in its movements the world and its significance; it renders thought and feeling into rhythmic movement and posture.

Delicate crafts capture in their subtle patterns some inspiration of a rapid moment or they show in the lines of a carving, in the design of a cup, the plans of the Unseen Spirit underlying the creative movement.

Poems

Poems in largeness cast like moving worlds
And metres surging with the ocean’s voice
Translated by grandeurs locked in Nature’s heart
But thrown now into a crowded glory of speech
The beauty and sublimity of her forms,
The passion of her moments and her moods
Lifting the human word near to the god’s.

Poems are cosmic in their sweep; their metres have the ring of oceans. They translate in packed splendours of speech the beauty and the greatness of the forms of Nature, the intensities of her moments and her moods—all originally contained in the unexpressed grandeurs in Nature. Thus do these Powers raise the human world close to the world of the Gods.

Astronomy and Sciences

Man’s eyes could look into the inner realms;
His scrutiny discovered number’s law
And organised the motions of the stars,
Mapped out the visible fashioning of the world,
Questioned the process of his thoughts or made
A theorised diagram of mind and life.

Man is able to study the workings in the inner realms of existence—not merely in the outer physical; he discovers the law governing numbers, builds up the system of astronomy and erects the scheme of creation as far as it is perceivable. He doubts and questions the modes of his thinking, or outlines a theory of the functionings of mind and life.

These not Enough for Her

These things she took in as her nature’s food,
But these alone could fill not her wide Self:
A human seeking limited by its gains,
To her they seemed the great and early steps
Hazardous of a young discovering spirit
Which saw not yet by its own native light;

Savitri assimilates with ease these contributions in the various fields of life and thought. But she is not content to rest with them. They do not satisfy her wide being. To her they represent man’s seeking which is limited by the knowledge it has garnered; they are great steps indeed but only the early, risky steps of a youthful adventurous spirit which has yet to learn to see in its own proper light.

Inadequacies

It tapped the universe with testing knocks
Or stretched to find Truth-mind’s divining rod;
A growing out there was to numberless sides,
But not the widest seeing of the soul,
Not yet the vast direct immediate touch,
Nor yet the art and wisdom of the Gods.

These are tentative feelings on the surfaces of the universe, stretchings of the venturing spirit to lay its hands upon the right instrument to discover the truth of things. All these attempts do result in a many-sided expansion. But not yet is the full vision of the soul; not yet the unlimited, direct close touch which yields the full knowledge by identity; not yet the art and wisdom that the Gods have.

Her Greatness waits to Form

A boundless knowledge greater than man’s thought,
A happiness too high for heart and sense
Locked in the world and yearning for release
She felt in her; waiting as yet for form,
It asked for objects around which to grow
And natures strong to bear without recoil
The splendour of her native royalty,
Her greatness and her sweetness and her bliss,
Her might to possess and her vast power to love:

There is an unbounded knowledge which cannot be grasped by human thought; a happiness that is beyond the capacity of the human heart and sense to reach and contain. Both of these are imprisoned in the world and struggle to emerge. Savitri feels in herself their pressure for release. The glory in her awaits the right time and means to manifest itself; it seeks for objects around which it can take shape, looks out for natures that are strong enough to receive without reaction and contain the full impact of her natural, regal splendour, her greatness, her sweetness, her bliss, her possessing might and her vast power of love.

Earth Made a Stepping-Stone

Earth made a stepping-stone to conquer heaven,
The soul saw beyond heaven’s limiting boundaries,
Met a great light from the Unknowable
And dreamed of a transcendent action’s sphere.

Her soul makes the earth a springboard to soar to the heavens, and even beholds the vasts beyond the heavens conceived by the human mind. It meets a great light from the Unknowable beyond and dreams of the action-range of the transcendent.

Aware of Universal Self

Aware of the universal Self in all
She turned to living hearts and human forms;
Her soul’s reflections, complements, counterparts,
The close outlying portions of her being
Divided from her by walls of body and mind
Yet to her spirit bound by ties divine.

Around her she is aware of the universal Self in all, she encounters in these human beings reflections of her own being, complements, counterparts, extensions of herself. Though they are separated in the outer physical bodies and their mental constructions, they are linked to her spirit by inner ties.

One Immense Embrace

Overcoming invisible hedge and masked defence
And the loneliness that separates soul from soul,
She wished to make all one immense embrace
That she might house in it all living things
Raised into a splendid point of seeing light
Out of division’s dense inconscient cleft,
And make them one with God and world and her.

The invisible barrier that divides soul from soul acts also as a defence against invasion from outside. Savitri, however, overcomes this separative wall with a view to holding all in one large embrace. She seeks to contain in her inner extension all living things, raising them from their divided, dense obscurities into one gathered state of luminous awareness, uniting all with herself, Nature and God.

Only a few Respond

Only a few responded to her call:
Still fewer felt the screened divinity
And strove to mate its godhead with their own,
Approaching with some kinship to her heights.

But only a few respond to Savitri’s call to rise and enlarge themselves. Still fewer are they who recognise the veiled divinity in her and make an effort to companion her godhead with the godhead of their own soul—by awaking and articulating it in life—, nor do they feel an affinity with her and climb to reach her heights.

They Glimpse her Light

Uplifted towards luminous secrecies
Or conscious of some splendour hidden above
They leaped to find her in a moment’s flash,
Glimpsing a light in a celestial vast,
But could not keep the vision and the power
And fell back to life’s dull ordinary tone.

Even these few who are uplifted towards unknown luminous heights or those who leap high making an effort to reach the hidden splendour above of which they are aware, get only a glimpse of her unearthly light for a moment. And unable to hold that vision and power, they fall back to their old, dull life routine.

They cannot Keep Peace

A mind daring heavenly experiment,
Growing towards some largeness they felt near,
Testing the unknown’s bound with eager touch
They still were prisoned by their human grain:
They could not keep up with her tireless step;
Too small and eager for her large-paced will,
Too narrow to look with the unborn Infinite’s gaze
Their nature weary grew of things too great.

They feel themselves near a daring mind soaring high, growing wide, probing eagerly into the realm of the unknown, but their human nature keeps them tied down; they cannot keep pace with her, they are too small and restless to keep in rhythm with her large-paced will, their vision is too narrow to look with her gaze of the Infinite. Their nature tires soon of these things that are too great for it.

No Match to her Measure

For even the close partners of her thoughts
Who could have walked the nearest to her ray,
Worshipped the power and light they felt in her
But could not match the measure of her soul.

Even those who are close to her thoughts and have the capacity to walk very near her effulgence, worship the power and light they feel in her, but are not in any sense her equals. She is but adored by them.

Divine and Far

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.

She admits them into her friendship. But they find her too lofty to know her fully. She walks in their front and leads them towards a light still greater than hers; she rules over their hearts and souls; they hold her lovingly close to their hearts, but still she is divine and far from their human grasp.

Satellites of Her Sun

Admiring and amazed they saw her stride
Attempting with a godlike rush and leap
Heights for their human stature too remote
Or with a slow great many-sided toil
Pushing towards aims they hardly could conceive;
Yet forced to be the satellites of her sun
They moved unable to forego her light,
Desiring they clutched at her with outstretched hands
Or followed stumbling in the paths she made.

They watch her, in admiration and amazement, attempting either with a godlike swiftness to scale heights too distant for their human nature or with deliberate massive effort making towards an objective beyond their conception. Though they are thus unable to keep pace with her, they are obliged to follow her wherever she moves; they cannot do without her light. They desire her and reach out to her somehow; some even manage to follow with faltering steps the paths she has forged.

Unable to Grasp her

The rest they could not see in visible light;
Vaguely they bore her inner mightiness.

Or bound by the senses and the longing heart,
Adoring with a turbid human love,
They could not grasp the mighty spirit she was
Or change by closeness to be even as she.

Some approach her in a vital way and cling to her for the inner nourishment and support they get from her; what else they derive they are unable to see dearly. They bear her greatness without knowing precisely what it is.

Some are so ridden with their senses and desire that they approach her in a too human way, adore her with their impure love; these cannot grasp her mighty spirit; even close proximity fails to change them into her likeness—there is an inner gulf.

Summons to Adore

Some felt her with their souls and thrilled with her;
A greatness felt near yet beyond mind’s grasp;
To see her was a summons to adore,
To be near her drew a high communion’s force.

Some, however, can feel her from their soul-level and they thrill to her presence. Her greatness is felt close but it cannot be grasped by the mind i.e. understood by thought. Merely to see Savitri evokes spontaneous feelings of adoration; to come near her imparts a force that flows from attunement to a higher Source.

So Men Worship

So men worship a god too great to know,
Too high, too vast to wear a limiting shape;
They feel a Presence and obey a might,
Adore a love whose rapture invades their breasts;
To a divine ardour quickening the heart-beats,
A law they follow greatening heart and life.

Opened to a breath is the new diviner air,
Opened to man is a freer, happier world:
He sees high steps climbing to Self and Light.

This is how men adore a God who is too great to be grasped and known by the mind, who is too lofty and vast to be cabined in a shape small enough to suit human comprehension. They feel a high Presence; feel and obey a superior Might; they are thrilled by a rapturous Love which they adore. They increase their pace under the drive of the divine enthusiasms that flood their being and follow a higher law that uplifts their life. Thus they begin to breathe a fresher and diviner air.

New vistas of a freer and happier world open to man and he sees the high-climbing steps leading to the Self, to the Light above.

They Love Her

Her divine parts the soul’s allegiance called:
It saw, it felt; it knew the deity.

Her will was puissant on their nature’s acts,
Her heart’s inexhaustible sweetness lured their hearts,
A being they loved whose bounds exceeded theirs;
Her measure they could not reach but bore her touch,
Answering with the flower’s answer to the sun
They gave themselves to her and asked no more.

Savitri’s divinity claims the allegiance of the souls of those around her; the soul sees, feels and recognises the divinity embodied in her. Her will exerts itself on their active nature; her sweetness of heart is abounding and helplessly attracts their hearts; they love her whose reaches range far beyond their own; they cannot, indeed, measure up to her but they bear her touch joyously responding like the budding flowers to the sun; they ask for nothing more than to give themselves to her entirely.

They Feel a Godhead

One greater than themselves, too wide for their ken,
Their minds could not understand nor wholly know,
Their lives replied to hers, moved at her words:
They felt a godhead and obeyed a call,
Answered to her lead and did her work in the world;
Their lives, their natures moved compelled by hers
As if the truth of their own larger selves
Put on an aspect of divinity
To exalt them to a pitch beyond their earth’s.

She is much too great for them, too vast for their comprehension; they cannot understand or entirely know her with their minds, but their lives respond to hers and go into action at her instance; they feel a divinity in her and obey its call; they follow her lead and participate in her work in the world, carrying out her wishes; their lives and natures are pressured into movement by her own. It is as if the greater truth of their own being, of which they are not conscious, has taken form in the divinity that is Savitri in order to raise them to a high level beyond the reach of their own physical nature.

They Live in Her

They felt a larger future meet their walk;
She held their hands, she chose for them their paths:
They were moved by her towards great unknown things,
Faith drew them and the joy to feel themselves hers;
They lived in her, they saw the world with her eyes.

They feel a wider future opening before them as they advance in her trail. She leads them, choosing their paths for them. They are urged by her towards great unknown things; though they do not know where they are led and impelled, they are drawn by sheer faith and by the joy of belonging to her. In her they live and with her eyes they see.

Splendid Yoke of Beauty and Love

Some turned to her against their nature’s bent;
Divided between wonder and revolt,
Drawn by her charm and mastered by her will,
Possessed by her, her striving to possess,
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:
Others pursued her with life’s blind desires
And claiming all of her as their lonely own,
Hastened to engross her sweetness meant for all.

Some, however, turn to her against their own natural inclinations, on the one hand they do not accept her and rebel against her, but on the other they are filled with wonder and admiration, attracted by her charm, dominated by her will; they are possessed by her even though they struggle to possess her. They are impatient of her rule and yet their hearts are her prisoners and hold close to the bonds that tie them to her—though they outwardly protest against these bonds. They profess to complain against her yoke of beauty and love, but had they lost that splendid yoke they would have wept. Some pursue her with nothing more than vital desires, each wanting to monopolise her for himself, to possess all her sweetness that is meant for all for himself alone.

Their Jealous Grasp

As earth claims light for its lone separate need,
Demanding her for their sole jealous clasp
They asked from her movements bounded like their own
And to their smallness craved a like response.

Or they repined that she surpassed their grip,
And hoped to bind her close with longing’s cords.

Just as the physical earth draws by its gravitation all life-giving light to itself—leaving other planets bare—they seek to monopolise her and ask of her such limited movements as can be grasped by their limited selves; they long to get from her responses in keeping with their own smallness. They complain that she exceeds their hold. They hope to bind and keep her near to themselves with the cords of their desire.

Her Touch too Strong

Or finding her touch desired too strong to bear
They blamed her for a tyranny they loved,
Shrank into themselves as from too bright a sun,
Yet hankered for the splendour they refused.

Angrily enamoured of her sweet passionate ray
The weakness of their earth could hardly bear,
They longed but cried out at the touch desired
Inapt to meet divinity so close,
Intolerant of a Force they could not house.

When they find her touch too strong for their small, impurified beings they complain of her tyranny—which, however, they love secretly—and shrink from it as one does from the dazzling sun. And yet they long for the very splendour they turn their backs upon. Because their weak earthly nature cannot bear her intense radiance which they so desire, they get angry but loudly protest when the touch is vouchsafed to them. They are unable to bear the presence of the divinity too dose. They become intolerant of a Force they cannot hold within themselves.

Drawing her Down

Some drawn unwillingly by her divine sway
Endured it like a sweet but alien spell,
Unable to mount to levels too sublime
They yearned to draw her down to their own earth.

Or forced to centre round her their passionate lives
They hoped to bind to their heart’s human needs
Her glory and grace that had enslaved their souls.

Some cannot resist being attracted to come under her sway, however much they may dislike it; they endure it as a sweet but foreign spell. Unable to rise to her sublime heights, they seek to bring her down to their own levels. When they are obliged to organise their active lives around her, they hope, for their own petty human needs, to draw upon her glory and grace to which their souls have fallen captive.

Breath of Godhead

But mid this world, these hearts that answered her call,
None could stand up her equal and her mate.

In vain she stooped to equal them with her heights,
Too pure that air was for small souls to breathe.

These comrade selves to raise to her own wide breadths
Her heart desired and fill with her own power
That a diviner Force might enter life,
A breath of Godhead greaten human time.

Some, indeed, respond to her with the best in them. But even among these none can equal her or companion her. She stoops to equal them, but in vain, her air is too pure for the earthly beings to breathe. She desires to raise them to her own amplitudes and pours into them her own power so that a greater and a diviner Force may enter and uplift them. For only by the breath of God can human life be greatened. It cannot rise beyond a certain level by its own effort.

She Leans Down

Although she leaned down to their littleness
Covering their lives with her strong passionate hands
And knew by sympathy their needs and wants
And dived in the shallow wave-depths of their lives
And met and shared their heart-beats of grief and joy
And bent to heal their sorrow and their pride,

Savitri leans down to their smallness and lays the balm of her strong hands on their lives; by sympathy she knows their needs and wants; she plunges into the shallow waters of their lives and shares their joys and griefs; she bends to give succour to their sorrows and hurt pride;

Her Self Lives Sole

Lavishing the might that was hers on her lone peak
To lift to it their aspiration’s cry
And though she drew their souls into her vast
And surrounded with the silence of her deeps
And held as the great Mother holds her own,
Only her earthly surface bore their charge
And mixed its fire with their mortality:
Her greater self lived sole, unclaimed, within.

She pours her unique might on them in order to raise their aspiration to her heights; she draws their souls into her vastness, surrounds them with her inner silence and holds them as the Divine Mother holds her children. Though she thus participates in their life, she is not lost in it; it is only her earthly exterior that suffers their impact and mixes its flaming purity and strength with their mortal nature. Her deeper and greater self lives within by itself, untouched, uninvolved.

Nearness to Nature

Oftener in dumb Nature’s stir and peace
A nearness she could feel serenely one;
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.

More often she feels a closeness with Nature around. Animals, birds, and other sub-human species are drawn to her by the Force within her. She joins her spontaneous delight to the unsophisticated, ardent lives of animals, birds, plants and flowers. They respond to her presence and touch with the simplicity that is natural to them.

Disturbing Element in Man

In man a dim disturbing somewhat lives;
It knows but turns away from divine Light
Preferring the dark ignorance of the fall.

This free response from the sub-human creation is not possible from man. For in him there is a new element, a vitiating factor, the human mind. It disturbs the harmony achieved at the plant and animal level of creation. It perceives and recognises the divine Light which can illumine and complete its limited self if only it would open and surrender itself to its power. But it is perverse and it deliberately turns away from the greater Light preferring to wallow in the darkness of its ignorance.

No Partner Anywhere

Among the many who came drawn to her
Nowhere she found her partner of high tasks,
The comrade of her soul, her other self
Who was made with her, like God and Nature, one.

There are many who are drawn to Savitri. But she does not find among them even one who could be her partner in the high tasks before her, who is designed by Providence to be her companion self, who is created along with her to be one with her, like God and Nature that are one in partnership

She Lives Aloof

Thus lighting earth around her like a sun,
Yet in her inmost sky an orb aloof,
A distance severed her from those most close.

Puissant, apart her soul as the gods live.

Some do succeed in approaching close to her; they are touched and catch her burning intensity; but they cannot keep it up, they fail after a time. Her demand proves too great to meet, her force too pure to bear.

Thus does she live like the sun, herself aloof but lighting up all around her. There is a gulf between her and even those who are most close to her. She is, like the gods, powerful and apart from all.

Her small Circle

As yet with the great world she had no link;
In a small circle of young eager hearts,
Her spirit’s early reign and human school,
Her apprenticeship she made to life and death,
Content in her little garden of the gods
As blossoms a flower in an unvisited place.

She has no connection yet with the world outside her immediate environment. She lives content in the little circle of her young fellow-spirits, growing in human life-experiences, blossoming like a flower in an unfrequented spot.

Hope of Golden Change

Earth nursed, unconscious still, the inhabiting flame,
Yet something deeply stirred and dimly knew;
There was a movement and a passionate call,
A rainbow dream, a hope of golden change;
Some secret wing of expectation beat,
A growing sense of something new and rare
And beautiful stole across the heart of Time.

Earth-Nature nurses this flaming child on her bosom, albeit unconscious of her greatness. All the same—though the Earth is not yet conscious of her greatness—there is something in the Earth Consciousness that knows vaguely and is moved to its depths; there is a stir and an intense call goes forth; there is bright dreaming and cheering hope of a luminous change in the air. An increasing expectation is abroad of something new, rare and beautiful.

World Discovers Her

Then a faint whisper of her touched the soil,
Breathed like a hidden need the soul divines;
The eye of the great world discovered her,
A wonder lifted up its bardic voice.

Then a vague intimation of her presence reaches life on earth; it comes as an answer to the felt need of all. The great wide world discovers Savitri and she is hailed in high wonder.

Her Name

A key to a Light still kept in being’s care,
The sun-word of an ancient mystery’s sense,
Her name ran murmuring on the lips of men
Exalted and sweet like an inspired verse
Struck from the epic lyre of rumour’s winds
Or sung like a chanted thought by the poet Fame.

Her name is a key to the realm of Light not yet manifested. The inspiring name communicates itself from person to person, exalting and filling everyone with happiness like the notes of a celestial lyre or a mantra chanted by a far-ranged Seer.

Unapproachably Divine

But like a sacred symbol’s was that cult.

Admired, unsought, intangible to the grasp
Her beauty and flaming strength were seen afar
Like lightning playing with the fallen day,
A glory unapproachably divine.