Golden Bridge

Savitri: Book 1 Canto 3 Section 1 His was a spirit that stooped from larger spheres Into our province of ephemeral sight, A colonist from immortality. A pointing beam on earth’s uncertain roads, His birth held up a symbol and a sign; His human self like a translucent cloak Covered the All-Wise who leads the unseeing world. Affiliated to cosmic Space and Time And paying here God’s debt to earth and...

Savitri: Book 1 Canto 1 Section 1 from 14:19 Almost that day the epiphany was disclosed Of which our thoughts and hopes are signal flares; A lonely splendour from the invisible goal Almost was flung on the opaque Inane. Once more a tread perturbed the vacant Vasts; Infinity’s centre, a Face of rapturous calm Parted the eternal lids that open heaven; A Form from far beatitudes seemed to near. Ambas...

Book 7 Canto 2 Pg 486 Section 3 All this the spirit concealed had done in her: A portion of the mighty Mother came Into her as into its own human part: Amid the cosmic workings of the Gods It marked her the centre of a wide-drawn scheme, Dreamed in the passion of her far-seeing spirit To mould humanity into God’s own shape And lead this great blind struggling world to light Or a new world discover...

Savitri: Book 1 Canto 2 Section 2 5:43 to For this she had accepted mortal bredth To wrestle with the Shadow she had come And must confront the riddle of man’s birth And life’s brief struggle in dumb Matter’s night. Whether to bear with Ignorance and death Or hew the ways of Immortality, To win or lose the godlike game for man, Was her soul’s issue thrown with Destiny’s dice. But not to submit and...

Savitri: Book 1 Canto 1 Section 2 2:45 to 17:06 Apart, living within, all lives she bore; Aloof, she carried in herself the world: Her dread was one with the great cosmic dread, Her strength was founded on the cosmic mights; The universal Mother’s love was hers. Against the evil at life’s afflicted roots, Her own calamity its private sign, Of her pangs she made a mystic poignant sword. A solitary...

Savitri: Book 1 Canto 1 Section 2 2:45 to 17:06 Too unlike the world she came to help and save, Her greatness weighed upon its ignorant breast And from its dim chasms welled a dire return, A portion of its sorrow, struggle, fall. To live with grief, to confront death on her road,— The mortal’s lot became the Immortal’s share. Thus trapped in the gin of earthly destinies, Awaiting her ordeal’s hour...

Savitri: Book 1 Canto 1 Section 2 2:45 to 17:06 Too unlike the world she came to help and save, Her greatness weighed upon its ignorant breast And from its dim chasms welled a dire return, A portion of its sorrow, struggle, fall. To live with grief, to confront death on her road,— The mortal’s lot became the Immortal’s share. Thus trapped in the gin of earthly destinies, Awaiting her ordeal’s hour...

Book 1 Canto 1 Section 2 2:45 to 17:06 She had brought with her into the human form, The calm delight that weds one soul to all, The key to the flaming doors of ecstasy. Earth’s grain that needs the sap of pleasure and tears Rejected the undying rapture’s boon: Offered to the daughter of infinity Her passion-flower of love and doom she gave. In vain now seemed the splendid sacrifice. A prodigal of...

Savitri BOOK VI: The Book of Fate 443-44-45 CANTO II: The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain Section 2 Where Ignorance is, there suffering too must come; Thy grief is a cry of darkness to the Light; Pain was the first-born of the Inconscience Which was thy body’s dumb original base; Already slept there pain’s subconscient shape: A shadow in a shadowy tenebrous womb, Till life shall move, it waits...

Savitri BOOK VI: The Book of Fate 443-44-45 CANTO II: The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain Section 2 Then after a silence Narad made reply: Tuning his lips to earthly sound he spoke, And something now of the deep sense of fate Weighted the fragile hints of mortal speech. His forehead shone with vision solemnised, Turned to a tablet of supernal thoughts As if characters of an unwritten tongue Ha...

Savitri - CANTO III: The Yoga of the Soul’s Release 25-26-27 A Seer was born, a shining Guest of Time. For him mind’s limiting firmament ceased above. In the griffin forefront of the Night and Day A gap was rent in the all-concealing vault; The conscious ends of being went rolling back: The landmarks of the little person fell, The island ego joined its continent. Overpassed was this world of rigid...

Savitri - Book 1, CANTO III: (Section 1 later) At last the traveller in the paths of Time Arrives on the frontiers of eternity. In the transient symbol of humanity draped, He feels his substance of undying self And loses his kinship to mortality. A beam of the Eternal smites his heart, His thought stretches into infinitude; All in him turns to spirit vastnesses. His soul breaks out to join the Ove...

Savitri - Book 1, CANTO III: Section 1 early His days were a long growth to the Supreme. A skyward being nourishing its roots On sustenance from occult spiritual founts Climbed through white rays to meet an unseen Sun. His soul lived as eternity’s delegate, His mind was like a fire assailing heaven, His will a hunter in the trails of light. An ocean impulse lifted every breath; Each action left th...

Savitri: Book 2 Canto 14 Section 1 The silent Soul of all the world was there: A Being lived, a Presence and a Power, A single Person who was himself and all And cherished Nature’s sweet and dangerous throbs Transfigured into beats divine and pure. One who could love without return for love, Meeting and turning to the best the worst, It healed the bitter cruelties of earth, Transforming all experi...

Savitri: Book 3 Canto 4 Section 1 O Son of Strength who climbst creation’s peaks, No soul is thy companion in the light; Alone thou standest at the eternal doors. What thou hast won is thine, but ask no more. O Spirit aspiring in an ignorant frame, O Voice arisen from the Inconscient’s world, How shalt thou speak for men whose hearts are dumb, Make purblind earth the soul’s seer-vision’s home Or l...

Savitri: Book 3 Canto 4 Section 3 (very beginning) “O strong forerunner, I have heard thy cry. One shall descend and break the iron Law, Change Nature’s doom by the lone spirit’s power. A limitless Mind that can contain the world, A sweet and violent heart of ardent calms Moved by the passions of the gods shall come. All mights and greatnesses shall join in her; Beauty shall walk celestial on the...

Savitri: Book 4 Canto 3 Section 1 “O Force-compelled, Fate-driven earth-born race, O petty adventurers in an infinite world And prisoners of a dwarf humanity, How long will you tread the circling tracks of mind Around your little self and petty things? But not for a changeless littleness were you meant, Not for vain repetition were you built; Out of the Immortal’s substance you were made; Your act...

Book 1, Canto II, p. 14-15-16 All in her pointed to a nobler kind. Near to earth’s wideness, intimate with heaven, Exalted and swift her young large-visioned spirit Voyaging through worlds of splendour and of calm Overflew the ways of Thought to unborn things. Ardent was her self-poised unstumbling will; Her mind, a sea of white sincerity, Passionate in flow, had not one turbid wave. As in a mysti...

Savitri: Book 1, Canto 2 Section 1 An absolute supernatural darkness falls On man sometimes when he draws near to God: An hour arrives when fail all Nature’s means; Forced out from the protecting Ignorance And flung back on his naked primal need, He at length must cast from him his surface soul And be the ungarbed entity within: That hour had fallen now on Savitri. A point she had reached where li...

Savitri: Book VII, Canto II The parable of the search for the Soul (p.475-76-77) The Voice replied: “Is this enough, O spirit? And what shall thy soul say when it wakes and knows The work was left undone for which it came? Or is this all for thy being born on earth Charged with a mandate from eternity, A listener to the voices of the years, A follower of the footprints of the gods, To pass and lea...

Savitri: Book VII, Canto II The parable of the search for the Soul (p.474-75) As the Voice touched, her body became a stark And rigid golden statue of motionless trance, A stone of God lit by an amethyst soul. Around her body’s stillness all grew still: Her heart listened to its slow measured beats, Her mind renouncing thought heard and was mute: “Why camest thou to this dumb deathbound earth, Thi...

Savitri: Book 6 Canto 2 Section 6 Fate is Truth working out in Ignorance. O King, thy fate is a transaction done At every hour between Nature and thy soul With God for its foreseeing arbiter. Fate is a balance drawn in Destiny’s book. Man can accept his fate, he can refuse. Even if the One maintains the unseen decree He writes thy refusal in thy credit page: For doom is not a close, a mystic seal....

Savitri: Book 5 Canto 3 Section 1 31:03 to 36:32 Once were my days like days of other men: To think and act was all, to enjoy and breathe; This was the width and height of mortal hope: Yet there came glimpses of a deeper self That lives behind Life and makes her act its scene. A truth was felt that screened its shape from mind, A Greatness working towards a hidden end, And vaguely through the form...

Savitri: Book 4 Canto 2 Section 1 Part 1 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 the breath is a new diviner air, Opened to man is a freer, happier world: He sees h...

Savitri: Book 4, Canto 2, Section 1, Part 1 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...