The Winds of Wonder

And Savitri rushed…

Hope in the morning arrived on wings of joy,

And orange of early sky smiled in the eager park;

Its ruby-hued fragrance enraptured bush and bud

And magical beauty began humming the hymn;

Adoring deities committed to a singing trance

Poured golden honey of the spirit’s flavours;

And Savitri rushed in tranquil chant of the splendid

As came he from east of the firm winning word.

18 January 2025

Sri Aurobindo

Savitri is represented in the poem as an incarnation of the Divine Mother.. This incarnation is supposed to have taken place in far past times when the whole thing had to be opened, so as to “hew the ways of Immortality”.  (1936)

Ne plus ultra of Savitri

Since first the earth-being’s heavenward growth began,

Through all the long ordeal of the race,

Never a rarer creature bore his shaft,

That burning test of the godhead in our parts,

A lightning from the heights on our abyss. ||3.29||

All in her pointed to a nobler kind. ||3.30||

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. ||3.31||

Ardent was her self-poised unstumbling will;

Her mind, a sea of white sincerity,

Passionate in flow, had not one turbid wave. ||3.32||

As in a mystic and dynamic dance

A priestess of immaculate ecstasies

Inspired and ruled from Truth’s revealing vault

Moves in some prophet cavern of the gods,

A heart of silence in the hands of joy

Inhabited with rich creative beats

A body like a parable of dawn

That seemed a niche for veiled divinity

Or golden temple door to things beyond. ||3.33||

Immortal rhythms swayed in her time-born steps;

Her look, her smile awoke celestial sense

Even in earth-stuff, and their intense delight

Poured a supernal beauty on men’s lives. ||3.34||

A wide self-giving was her native act;

A magnanimity as of sea or sky

Enveloped with its greatness all that came

And gave a sense as of a greatened world:

Her kindly care was a sweet temperate sun,

Her high passion a blue heaven’s equipoise. ||3.35||

As might a soul fly like a hunted bird,

Escaping with tired wings from a world of storms,

And a quiet reach like a remembered breast,

In a haven of safety and splendid soft repose

One could drink life back in streams of honey-fire,

Recover the lost habit of happiness,

Feel her bright nature’s glorious ambiance,

And preen joy in her warmth and colour’s rule. ||3.36||

A deep of compassion, a hushed sanctuary,

Her inward help unbarred a gate in heaven;

Love in her was wider than the universe,

The whole world could take refuge in her single heart. ||3.37||

The great unsatisfied godhead here could dwell:

Vacant of the dwarf self’s imprisoned air

Her mood could harbour his sublimer breath

Spiritual that can make all things divine. ||3.38||

For even her gulfs were secrecies of light. ||3.39||

At once she was the stillness and the word,

A continent of self-diffusing peace,

An ocean of untrembling virgin fire:

The strength, the silence of the gods were hers. ||3.40||

In her he found a vastness like his own,

His high warm subtle ether he refound

And moved in her as in his natural home. ||3.41||

In her he met his own eternity. ||3.42||

Savitri Book 1 Canto 2 – The Issue

All in her pointed to a nobler kind. ||3.30||

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. ||3.31||

Ardent was her self-poised unstumbling will;

Her mind, a sea of white sincerity,

Passionate in flow, had not one turbid wave. ||3.32||

The featured painting is by Huta I:2#5; here is the sketch by the Mother

The Mother