The Winds of Wonder

Apropos of Two Vast Negations — 16

Earth is the chosen place of mightiest souls

Savitri addresses transfigured Death as a “Besetter”. His argument to tempt her away from the task for which she took the mortal birth is strongly countered by her. She came here not to go back to her native home of felicitous immortality, up there, in the Transcendent. She is luminously alert to the purpose of her mortal birth. Her winning courage to counter the mighty supreme God and to dismiss him with firmness speak of her own super-matching greatness.

O besetter of man’s soul with life and death

And the world’s pleasure and pain and Day and Night,

Tempting his heart with the far lure of heaven,

Testing his strength with the close touch of hell,

I climb not to thy everlasting Day,

Even as I have shunned thy eternal Night. ||151.2||

Earth is the chosen place of mightiest souls;

Earth is the heroic spirit’s battlefield,

The forge where the Arch-mason shapes his works. ||151.4||

Thy servitudes on earth are greater, king,

Than all the glorious liberties of heaven. ||151.5||

The heavens were once to me my natural home, …

I have beat swift harmonies of rapture vast,

Danced in spontaneous measures of the soul

The great and easy dances of the gods. ||151.6||

Too far thy heavens for me from suffering men. ||151.9||

Imperfect is the joy not shared by all. ||151.10||

Oh to spread forth, oh to encircle and seize

More hearts till love in us has filled thy world! ||151.11||

O life, the life beneath the wheeling stars

For victory in the tournament with death,

For bending of the fierce and difficult bow,

For flashing of the splendid sword of God! ||151.12||

Thy fine-curved jewelled hilt call Savitri,

Thy blade’s exultant smile name Satyavan. ||151.16||

Fashion to beauty, point us through the world. ||151.17||

Break not the lyre before the song is found;

Are there not still unnumbered chants to weave? ||151.18||

I know that I can lift man’s soul to God,

I know that he can bring the Immortal down. ||151.20||

Let not the inconscient gulf swallow man’s race

That through earth’s ignorance struggles towards the Light. ||151.22||

O thunderer with the lightnings of the soul,

Give not to darkness and to death thy sun,

Achieve thy wisdom’s hidden firm decree

And the mandate of thy secret world-wide love. ||151.23||