Book-4-Study-Canto-4

Canto Four

The Quest

Summary
At first Savitri’s mind is occupied with the strangeness of the scenes opening before her as she drives her chariot. But soon, a deeper consciousness grows up and she begins to feel all as her own, as once known to her. Old memories well up and there is a sense of continuity of purpose and action from the past.

Some guidance leads her carriage; the godheads move who always act from behind the veil working out the destiny which is but the Spirit’s will. A calm Presence above her chooses each turn on the way.

Her journey runs across crowded cities, forts, gardens and temples. During nights she rests in the palaces on the route. Then she comes into the countryside where Nature is fresh, not yet peopled with human cares and joys. She feels the closeness of the Earth and hears her inarticulate voice.

Her nature is in communion with her Maker. King-sages come to share in her happy peace after their life of strife and labour. Some retire into the recesses of the soul and realise oneness with the world. Some break through the walls of the mind and soar into the heights of the Spirit from where Truth leans down on them. Ascetics sit in concentration waiting upon the Immutable and the Ineffable.

Seers tune themselves to the universal Will and lie content in God. The young disciples around them are fashioned by their touch and greatened in their presence. In this air king-children play and grow in heroic moulds.

Sages breathing freedom and joy assist the entry of gods on earth, teach the young to think and live high. Their presence, even their silence is of help to earth. In their environs beasts forget their enmities and join in friendship. Some, who go beyond the confines of thought, bring back to earth Force and Light from Beyond. Some watch as witnesses from their Silence, some disappear into the Vast.

Savitri journeys through all these retreats, halts in the hermitages during nights or rests in the open, on the banks of rivers, in solitary tracts, in desert spaces.

But still the quest is not accomplished, the destined face is not yet found. In the meanwhile the spring is gone and the burning summer is on.

Deeper Consciousness wells Up

The world-ways opened before Savitri.

At first a strangeness of new brilliant scenes
Peopled her mind and kept her body’s gaze.

But as she moved across the changing earth
A deeper consciousness welled up in her:
A citizen of many scenes and climes,
Each soil and country it has made its home;
It took all clans and peoples for her own,
Till the whole destiny of mankind was hers.

The world-ways open wide before Savitri. At first her mind is full of the strangeness of the bright scenes she is traversing and her eyes are enraptured. But as she proceeds across the changing scenery a deeper Consciousness surges up in her. This Consciousness is universal and feels at home everywhere. It makes her identify herself with every country and people she comes across, till the destiny of entire mankind, becomes her own.

Memories Recur

These unfamiliar spaces on her way
Were known and neighbours to a sense within;
Landscapes recurred like lost forgotten fields,
Cities and rivers and plains her vision claimed
Like slow-recurring memories in front,
The stars at night were her past’s brilliant friends,
The winds murmured to her of ancient things
And she met nameless comrades loved by her once.

All was a part of old forgotten selves.

Though the regions she traverses are new, they are familiar to some inner sense in her. All revives some old memories, landscapes, cities, rivers, plains. The stars shine recalling their past friendship with her, the winds whisper to her of ancient happenings. She does not indeed know the names of those she comes across, but she is aware that once before she has loved them as comrades.

All is a part of lives past and forgotten.

Journey often Made

Vaguely or with a flash of sudden hints
Her acts recalled a line of bygone power,
Even her motion’s purpose was not new:
Traveller to a prefigured high event,
She seemed to her remembering witness soul
To trace again a journey often made.

Either in a flash or in some vague way, her acts reveal a power held in the past; even the objective of her journey is not new. To her remembering witness soul it seems that, as a traveller to some predestined event, she is again setting out on a journey that has been often made in the past.

Hooded Godheads Ride

A guidance turned the dumb revolving wheels
And in the eager body of their speed
The dim-masked hooded godheads rode who move
Assigned to man immutably from his birth,
Receivers of the inner and outer law,
At once the agents of his spirit’s will
And witnesses and executors of his fate.

The wheels of her swift-moving carriage are guided by veiled godheads, the Powers that are assigned to man by Providence and accompany him from his very birth, knowing the governing laws, inner and outer. They are the transmitters of his spirit’s will, observers and effectuators of what is called his fate, but is really the choice of his soul.

Hooded Godheads (II)

Inexorably faithful to their task,
They hold his nature’s sequence in their guard
Carrying the unbroken thread old lives have spun.

Attendants on his destiny’s measured walk
Leading to joys he has won and pains he has called,
Even in his casual steps they intervene.

with the deeper will of the soul. It is they who carry the continuing thread forged by and linking up all his past lives. They follow the determined course of his destiny leading to the joys and pains that he has evoked by his actions. They are there to guide even his casual movements.

Fate (I)

Nothing we think or do is void or vain;
Each is an energy loosed and holds its course.

The shadowy keepers of our deathless past
Have made our fate the child of our own acts,
And from the furrows laboured by our will
We reap the fruit of our forgotten deeds.

Nothing that man thinks or does is without consequence. Every movement releases an energy and it goes forth on its course. These veiled custodians of man’s unbroken past see to it that each act of his will—whether he remembers it or not—produces its own consequence. Thus they make his fate the result of his own acts.

Fate (II)

They seem but parts of a mechanic Force,
To a mechanic mind tied by earth’s laws;
Yet are they instruments of a Will supreme,
Watched by a still all-seeing Eye above.

But this process is not seen by the outer eye. Man lives in the present; the past of which the present is a result, is not known to him. Hence to his mind labouring under the rule of the laws of physical Matter, all happenings, which are really consequences of his own past acts, appear to be the workings of a mechanical Force in Nature. In reality they are all instruments through which a supreme Will effectuates itself under the calm overseeing Eye of the Divine.

Prescient Architect

A prescient architect of Fate and Chance
Who builds our lives on a foreseen design
The meaning knows and consequence of each step
And watches the inferior stumbling powers.

The Divine architect who foresees all, who works through the instrumentation of Fate and Chance and shapes the life of man according to a prefigured pattern, knows precisely the significance and the consequence of each step and he watches the action of the lower agencies stumbling towards the fulfilment of his design.

Calm Presence Guides

Upon her silent heights she was aware
Of a calm Presence throned above her brows
Who saw the goal and chose each fateful curve;
It used the body for its pedestal,
The eyes that wandered were its searchlight fires,
The hands that held the reins its living tools;
All was the working of an ancient plan,
A way prepared by an unerring Guide.

Savitri is aware of a calm Presence above her head. This Presence sees the goal of the journey and decides which turning to take. It uses the physical body as its pedestal, the seeing eyes as its torchlights, the hands holding the reins as its living instruments.

All that is going on is really the working of a plan that has been drawn up of old; the way has been prepared by a faultless Guide.

Driven from Within

Across wide noons and glowing afternoons,
She met with Nature and with human forms
And listened to the voices of the world;
Driven from within she followed her long road,
Mute in the luminous cavern of her heart,
Like a bright cloud through the resplendent day.

On the long journey, she comes across the various aspects of Nature, meets different human beings and listens to the voices of the wide world. She speeds on impelled from within, silent in the luminous depths of her heart.

Across Peopled Tracts and Temples

At first her path ran far through peopled tracts:
Admitted to the lion eye of States
And theatres of the loud act of man,
Her carven chariot with its fretted wheels
Threaded through clamorous marts and sentinel towers
Past figured gates and high dream-sculptured fronts
And gardens hung in the sapphire of the skies,
Pillared assembly halls with armoured guards,
Small fanes where one calm Image watched man’s life
And temples hewn as if by exiled gods
To imitate their lost eternity.

At first her path runs through crowded territories—kingdoms, scenes of imposing activity of men, noisy marts, towers and forts, beautiful gardens, magnificent assembly halls. She passes by small temples on the way in which a calm Image regards the rushing activity of man; she also passes by huge temples hewn in the rock, looking as if gods exiled from heaven have erected them as a semblance of the eternity they have lost in their banishment.

In Slumbering Palaces

Often from gilded dusk to argent dawn
Where jewel-lamps flickered on frescoed walls
And the stone lattice stared at moonlit boughs,
Half-conscious of the tardy listening night
Dimly she glided between banks of sleep
At rest in the slumbering palaces of kings.

On her way, she often rests during nights in the palaces of kings. Her sleep is half-conscious — it is not of the overpowering type that pulls one down into sub-conscious or unconscious depths.

Fate-Van Passes

Hamlet and village saw the fate-van pass,
Homes of a life bent to the soil it ploughs
For sustenance of its short and passing days
That, transient, keep their old repeated course
Unchanging in the circle of a sky
Which alters not above our mortal toil.

Savitri’s van, carrying the fate of the earth, passes through hamlets and villages where people are ever engaged in the small rounds of their existence, cultivating lands for the sustenance of their lives that are transient, mechanically moving in the same old grooves under a sky that watches, unchanging, their mortal toil below.

Free Spaces

Away from this thinking creature’s burdened hours
To free and griefless spaces now she turned
Not yet perturbed by human joys and fears.

Here was the childhood of primeval earth,
Here timeless musings large and glad and still,
Men had forborne as yet to fill with cares,
Imperial acres of the eternal sower
And wind-stirred grass-lands winking in the sun:

Savitri now leaves behind all scenes of human labours and crosses into vaster spaces of Nature where human joys, fears and griefs have not yet entered and disturbed. Here she is able to see what the earth was like in its infancy—quiet, happy and expansive—wrapt in timeless musings. Men have still not come here filling it with their cares. Here are the royal expanses of God, the eternal sower, acres of grass-lands swaying to the winds, glistening in the bright sun.

The Chariot Hastens

Or mid green musing of woods and rough-browed hills,
In the grove’s murmurous bee-air humming wild
Or past the long lapsing voice of silver floods
Like a swift hope journeying among its dreams
Hastened the chariot of the golden bride.

Like a rapid hope journeying through dreamland, Savitri’s chariot hurries through green forests and rugged hills, through groves filled with the humming of the bees, passing by the frothy waters of rivers in flood.

Tract-Memories and Silences

Out of the world’s immense unhuman past
Tract-memories and ageless remnants came,
Domains of light enfeoffed to an antique calm
Listened to the unaccustomed sound of hooves
And large immune entangled silences
Absorbed her into emerald secrecy
And slow hushed wizard nets of faery bloom
Environed with their coloured snare her wheels.

She passes over tracts which have absorbed memories of the long, dateless past of the earth even before man appeared; domains of light steeped in an ancient calm listen to the unaccustomed sound of Savitri’s horses; the vast silences of the woods engulf her from all sides; the bloonfing creepers and variegated growths mesh the wheels of her chariot.

Inner Ear Listens

The strong importunate feet of Time fell soft
Along these lonely ways, his titan pace
Forgotten and his stark and ruinous rounds.

The inner ear that listens to solitude,
Leaning self-rapt unboundedly could hear
The rhythm of the intenser wordless Thought
That gathers in the silence behind life,
And the low sweet inarticulate voice of earth
In the great passion of her sun-kissed trance
Ascended with its yearning undertone.

The tread of Time has been slow and soft on these lonely spaces; all things are fresh and whole. Unlike the physical ear that hears only the loud sounds of the external world, there is an inner ear that hears the silence of solitude, the silence behind the movement of life in which the Thought beyond word gathers; here in these lonely ways this self-rapt ear hears the inner rhythm without constriction.

Here also rises in its inarticulate voice the aspiration of the earth in its intense concentration.

Clasp of Love

Afar from the brute noise of clamorous needs
The quieted all-seeking mind could feel,
At rest from its blind outwardness of will,
The unwearied clasp of her mute patient love
And know for a soul the mother of our forms.

Away from the loud clamour of the world of men, freed from the pull of outward will, the quieted, all seeking mind can here feel the ceaseless clasp of the mute, unfired love of Mother-Nature and know her as a living soul.

Spaces of Release

This spirit stumbling in the fields of sense,
This creature bruised in the mortar of the days
Could find in her broad spaces of release.

Not yet was a world all occupied by care.

Here the emerging spirit fumbling in the domains of the senses, the mortal buffetted on the waves of time, is able to find large spaces of release. Here is a world not yet filled with human cares and anxieties.

Impersonal Reaches

The bosom of our mother kept for us still
Her austere regions and her musing depths,
Her impersonal reaches lonely and inspired
And the mightinesses of her rapture haunts.

Here Mother-Nature has still reserved for man her solemn regions and meditative depths, her impersonal, vibrant solitudes and the glories of her rapture-fields.

Symbol-Mysteries

Muse-lipped she nursed her symbol mysteries
And guarded for her pure-eyed sacraments
The valley-clefts between her breasts of joy,
Her mountain-altars for the fires of dawn
And nuptial beaches where the ocean couched
And the huge chanting of her prophet woods.

The air is one of contemplation and mystery. It is a veritable place of worship where the joyous valleys serve for pure sacraments, the mountain tops for the altars of the dawn fires, where the beaches are continually invaded by the ocean and the huge forests resound with prophet-chantings.

Happy Plains

Fields had she of her solitary mirth,
Plains hushed and happy in the embrace of light,
Alone with the cry of birds and hue of flowers
And wildernesses of wonder lit by her moons
And grey seer-evenings kindling with the stars
And dim movement in the night’s infinitude.

Fields stretch out in solitary joy, plains are quiet and happy in pouring light; all over are the cry of birds and hue of flowers; wildernesses are transformed to wonder by the moon; meditative evenings kindled by the stars, there are dim stirrings in the vastness of the night.

Exultation

August, exulting in her Maker’s eye,
She felt her nearness to him in earth’s breast,
Conversed still with a Light behind the veil,
Still communed with Eternity beyond.

Here Nature exults in the sight of her Lord; she feels close to him in this region of the earth. In the stillness obtaining here she is able to converse with a Light that burns behind the veil, commune with the Eternity beyond this manifestation.

King-Sages

A few and fit inhabitants she called
To share the glad communion of her peace;
The breadth, the summit were their natural home.

The strong king-sages from their labour done,
Freed from the warrior tension of their task,
Came to her serene sessions in these wilds;
The strife was over, the respite lay in front.

Here Nature calls and admits to her peace a few, fit inhabitants of the region. They feel at home in her wideness, in her height; they have broken out of the walls of their little ego-selves.

Strong kings who have completed their tasks and are free from the tensions of their royal assignments, now attend as sages these sessions of peace. The struggle of their lives is left behind; now is the period of rest.

Happy King-Sages

Happy they lived with birds and beasts and flowers
And sunlight and the rustle of the leaves,
And heard the wild winds wandering in the night,
Mused with the stars in their mute constant ranks,
And lodged in the mornings as in azure tents,
And with the glory of the noons were one.

Here the king-sages live in happy communion with the birds, beasts, flowers and plants, the sun, the wind, the stars, the gyrations of time in the morn, the noon and the night.

Some Plunge Deeper

Some deeper plunged; from life’s external clasp
Beckoned into a fiery privacy
In the soul’s unassailed star-white recess
They sojourned with an ever-living Bliss;
A Voice profound in the ecstasy and the hush
They heard, beheld an all-revealing Light.

Some of these sages delve deeper. They withdraw from the hold of outer life, retire into the vibrant, pure secrecies of the soul uninvaded by external impacts, and live there in immortal bliss. There in that ecstasy and silence they hear a profound Voice and behold an all-revealing Light.

Reach the one Self

All time-made difference they overcame;
The world was fibred with their own heart-strings;
Close-drawn to the heart that beats in every breast,
They reached the one self in all through boundless love.

They overcome the barriers of time and space. They widen their hearts and become one with the world. With their limitless love they embrace all and find the one Self that dwells in every heart.

Expansion of consciousness starts from the heart and love is the door to reach the unity of the Self in all.

Attuned to Silence

Attuned to Silence and to the world-rhyme,
They loosened the knot of the imprisoning mind;
Achieved was the wide untroubled witness gaze,
Unsealed was Nature’s great spiritual eye;
To the height of heights rose now their daily climb:
Truth leaned to them from her supernal realm;
Above them blazed eternity’s mystic suns.

They tune themselves to the Silence looming behind things and in that Silence hear the world-rhythms. They are no longer confined within the walls of the mind. Their sight is no longer limited to and distracted by apparent phenomena; their inner eye opens and sees wide and far, unaffected by what is seen. Their daily ascent reaches the peaks of their being and Truth from her celestial regions leans down to them. Spiritual suns of Eternity shine above them.

Austere Ascetics

Nameless the austere ascetics without home
Abandoning speech and motion and desire,
Aloof from creatures sat absorbed, alone,
Immaculate in tranquil heights of self
On concentration’s luminous voiceless peaks,
World-naked hermits with their matted hair
Immobile as the passionless great hills
Around them grouped like thoughts of some vast mood
Awaiting the Infinite’s behest to end.

Here also are self-denuding, austere ascetics, giving up speech, motion, desire, withdrawn from fellow-beings, sitting alone absorbed in themselves on the purer heights of the self, on the silent, luminous peaks of concentration. These hermits who have renounced the world sit immobile like the tranquil hills around them,—hills that look like so many thoughts of some vast poise, waiting only for the Infinite’s flat to end themselves.

Universal Seers

The seers attuned to the universal Will,
Content in Him who smiles behind earth’s forms
Abode ungrieved by the insistent days.

About them like green trees girdling a hill
Young grave disciples fashioned by their touch,
Trained to the simple act and conscious word,
Greatened within and grew to meet their heights.

There are seers who are in time with the Universal Will, absorbed in God who ever smiles behind the exterior of earth’s forms, living unaffected by the pressing passage of time. Around these seers are young, earnest disciples shaped by their mere touch, trained to act directly and speak consciously; they are enlarging their consciousness from within and growing towards the heights of their masters.

Wandering Seekers

Far-wandering seekers on the Eternal’s path
Brought to these quiet founts their spirit’s thirst
And spent the treasure of a silent hour
Bathed in the purity of the mild gaze
That, uninsistent, ruled them from its peace,
And by its influence found the ways of calm.

To these springs of Quietude, wanderers on the Path of the Eternal come to quench their spiritual thirst; here they spend a rich silent hour, bathing in the reigning purity of the gentle atmosphere of the place oozing peace, and under its influence find the ways of calm.

King-Children (I)

The Infants of the monarchy of the worlds,
The heroic leaders of a coming time,
King-children nurtured in that spacious air
Like lions gambolling in sky and sun
Received half-consciously their godlike stamp:

Here too noble children, chosen souls, the coming hero-leaders of the dawning future, are nourished in the free air of the place and grow imbibing half-consciously the greatness of the seers and seekers of God.

King-Children (II)

Formed in the type of the high thoughts they sang
They learned the wide magnificence of mood
That makes us comrades of the cosmic urge,
No longer chained to their small separate selves,
Plastic and firm beneath the eternal hand,
Met Nature with a bold and friendly clasp
And served in her the Power that shapes her works.

They are formed in the mould of the high themes they sing about and they learn effortlessly the poise of large vastitude that makes one share the cosmic impulses; no more confined to their little separate selves, moulded easily by the hand of the Divine Shaper, they meet Nature freely, without inhibitions, and serve her executive Power.

Sages (I)

One-souled to all and free from narrowing bonds,
Large like a continent of warm sunshine
In wide equality’s impartial joy,
These sages breathed for God’s delight in things.

Free from the constricting bonds of ego and division, meeting all on the basis of one soul, radiating the warm, impersonal joy of wide equality, these sages live for the natural delight of God in existence.

Sages (II)

Assisting the slow entries of the gods,
Sowing in young minds immortal thoughts they lived,
Taught the great Truth to which man’s race must rise
Or opened the gates of freedom to a few,
Imparting to our struggling world the Light
They breathed like spirits from Time’s dull yoke released,
Comrades and vessels of the cosmic Force,
Using a natural mastery like the sun’s:
Their speech, their silence was a help to earth.

By means of this inner participation with the Divine, these sages help in the slow entry of the gods into the earth-field; they sow in the young minds under their charge the immortal thoughts which they themselves live; they teach and hold up to all the great Truth to which humanity must rise; they open the doors of liberation to the chosen few; themselves released from the dreary yoke of Time, they impart to the struggling world the Light they have gained; they are both the companions and the channels of the Cosmic Force; they have a natural mastery over things as the radiant sun has. Not their speech alone but even their silence is a help to the earth.

Oneness

A magic happiness flowed from their touch;
Oneness was sovereign in that sylvan peace,
The wild beast joined in friendship with its prey,
Persuading the hatred and the strife to cease
The love that flows from the one Mother’s breast
Healed with their hearts the hard and wounded world.

mies among the beasts join in friendship; hatred and strife cease. Through the hearts of the sages flows the one Mother’s Love healing the wounds of the world.

Beyond Thought

Others escaped from the confines of thought
To where Mind motionless sleeps waiting Light’s birth,
And came back quivering with a nameless Force
Drunk with a wine of lightning in their cells;

There are others among the sages who have gone beyond the bounds of thought to the heights of being where the mind lies still, dormant, receptively waiting for the outbreak of the higher Light; when they come back from these summits they are charged with a new Force and their very cells vibrate with flashes of light.

Intuitive Knowledge

Intuitive knowledge leaping into speech,
Hearing the subtle voice that clothes the heavens,
Carrying the splendour that has lit the suns,
They sang Infinity’s names and deathless powers
In metres that reflect the moving worlds,
Sight’s sound-waves breaking from the soul’s great deeps.

Intuitive knowledge flows through their words; their ear is open to the subtle sound, nada, that covers the celestial realms; they bear the glory that lights up the suns in the skies. They hymn the names of Infinity and the Powers Immortal in metres that correspond to the rhythms of the movement of the worlds; the seeing word, pasyanti vak, breaks out from the pro-founds of their Soul.

Impersonal

Some lost to the person and his strip of thought
In a motionless ocean of impersonal Power,
Sat mighty, visioned with the Infinite’s Light,
Or, comrades of the everlasting Will,
Surveyed the plan of past and future Time.

Some are no more conscious of their personal selves and thought; they are poised in a status of immobile, vast, impersonal Power, seeing with the Light of the Infinite. In tune with the eternal Will, they survey the rollings of Time.

World-Helping Indifference

Some winged like birds out of the cosmic sea
And vanished into a bright and featureless Vast:
Some silent watched the universal dance,
Or helped the world by world-indifference.

Some soar out of the universal expanse and disappear into a shining, indeterminate Vast. Some, steeped in Silence, watch the Cosmic play or stay indifferent and yet by that indifference help the world; even their uninvolved presence acts as a stable support to the world-movement.

Merged in Self

Some watched no more merged in a lonely Self,
Absorbed in the trance from which no soul returns,
All the occult world-lines for ever closed,
The chains of birth and person cast away:
Some uncompanioned reached the Ineffable.

Some, however, do not watch the universe at all; they are merged in the Self that is aloof from everything; completely absorbed in the trance-state from which none returns to external waking condition, they shut themselves off from the various occult world-systems, freed from the bonds of birth and individuality.

Some isolate themselves from everybody and everything and reach the Reality that is inexpressible in speech.

Carven Car Glides on

As floats a sunbeam through a shady place,
The golden virgin in her carven car
Came gliding among meditation’s seats.

Often in twilight mid returning troops
Of cattle thickening with their dust the shades
When the loud day had slipped below the verge,
Arriving in a peaceful hermit grove
She rested drawing round her like a cloak
Its spirit of patient muse and potent prayer.

Savitri in her chariot drives past these scenes of meditation. Often she arrives at a peaceful hermitage in the evening as the cattle are returning home after grazing and the busy day has set; she rests there covering herself, as it were, with the spirit of unhurried contemplation and powerful prayer reigning in that place.

Temple Beckons

Or near to a lion river’s tawny mane
And trees that worshipped on a praying shore,
A domed and templed air’s serene repose
Beckoned to her hurrying wheels to stay their speed.

Or it is a domed temple exuding a serenity of repose, amidst solemn trees on the bank of a river, that beckons to her to stay awhile.

Kinship with Calm

In the solemnity of a space that seemed
A mind remembering ancient silences,
Where to the heart great bygone voices called
And the large liberty of brooding seers
Had left the long impress of their soul’s scene
Awake in candid dawn or darkness mooned,
To the still touch inclined the daughter of Flame
Drank in hushed splendour between tranquil lids
And felt the kinship of eternal calm.

In the solemnity of that spot redolent with memories of ancient silences, where mighty voices from the past reach the heart and the wide freedom of contemplative seers has left a strong stamp of their soul-action, Savitri—awake in the moonlit night or at the break of dawn—shares tranquilly the pervading stillness and feels close to the eternal Calm.

Morning Reminds

But morn broke in reminding her of her quest
And from low rustic couch or mat she rose
And went impelled on her unfinished way
And followed the fateful orbit of her life
Like a desire that questions silent gods,
Then passes starlike to some bright Beyond.

However, with the coming of the morning Savitri is reminded of her quest. She gets up from the humble couch or mat on which she rested during the night and resumes her journey. She follows the destined curve of her life as she is impelled to, like a strong desire that meets and questions the gods who answer not and without tarrying there proceeds on its way to some radiant Beyond.

Solitary Tracts

Thence to great solitary tracts she came,
Where man was a passer-by towards human scenes
Or sole in Nature’s vastness strove to live
And called for help to ensouled invisible Powers,
Overwhelmed by the immensity of his world
And unaware of his own infinity.

She arrives at bare uninhabited tracts where man does not dwell but only passes across to find more habitable regions, or where man struggles to live in the extended vastnesses of Nature and overcome by the immensity of his environment, unconscious of his own veiled infinity, prays to the Gods for help.

The Gods are Powers of the Supreme God-head individualised and manifest in subtler forms for purposes of the Manifestation.

Earth Calls

The Earth multiplied to her a changing brow
And called her with a far and nameless voice.

The mountains in their anchorite solitude,
The forests with their multitudinous chant
Disclosed to her the masked divinity’s doors.

The Earth presents to Savitri a variegated landscape and beckons her farther and farther. The hermit-like mountains and the forests humming with innumerable sounds reveal to her, as it were, the doors of the Divinity veiled in Earth-Nature.

She Travels

On dreaming plains, an indolent expanse,
The death-bed of a pale enchanted eve
Under the glamour of a sunken sky,
Impassive she lay as at an age’s end,
Or crossed an eager pack of huddled hills
Lifting their heads to hunt a lairlike sky,
Or travelled in a strange and empty land
Where desolate summits camped in a weird heaven,
Mute sentinels beneath a drifting moon,

Savitri lies down relaxedly under the open skies on musing plains; she crosses clusters of hills shooting into the skies; she journeys through strange and vacant tracts where barren summits stand like dumb sentinels under a wandering moon;

Woods and Deserts

Or wandered in some lone tremendous wood
Ringing for ever with the crickets’ cry,
Or followed a long glistening serpent road
Through fields and pastures lapped in moveless light
Or reached the wild beauty of a desert space
Where never plough was driven nor herd had grazed
And slumbered upon stripped and thirsty sands
Amid the savage wild-beast Night’s appeal.

She wanders in a solitary thick forest chiming with the crickets’ cry; or she takes a long shining road darting through fields and pastures under a relentless sun; or she arrives at a desert, wildly beautiful, where nothing has ever grown and sleeps there upon the bare, dry sands amidst the night cries of wild and savage beasts.

Summer Arrives

Still unaccomplished was the fateful quest;
Still she found not the one predestined face
For which she sought amid the sons of men.

A grandiose silence wrapped the regal day.

The months had fed the passion of the sun
And now his burning breath assailed the soil.

The tiger heats prowled through the fainting earth;
All was licked up as by a lolling tongue.

The spring winds failed; the sky was set like bronze.

Still Savitri’s fateful quest is not fulfilled; she has not yet found the decreed person for whom she has