THE SYMBOL DAWN
IT was the hour before the Gods awake.
Across the path of the divine
Event
The huge foreboding mind of
Night, alone
In her unlit temple of
eternity,
Lay stretched immobile upon
Silence' marge.
Almost one felt, opaque,
impenetrable,
In the sombre symbol of her
eyeless muse
The abysm of the unbodied
Infinite;
A fathomless zero occupied
the world.
A power of fallen boundless
self awake (10)
Between the first and the
last Nothingness,
Recalling the tenebrous womb
from which it came,
Turned from the insoluble
mystery of birth
And the tardy process of
mortality
And longed to reach its end
in vacant Nought.
As in a dark beginning of all
things,
A mute featureless semblance
of the Unknown
Repeating for ever the
unconscious act,
Prolonging for ever the
unseeing will,
Cradled the cosmic drowse of
ignorant Force (20)
Whose moved creative slumber
kindles the suns
And carries our lives in its
somnambulist whirl.
Athwart the vain enormous
trance of Space,
Its formless stupor without
mind or life,
A shadow spinning through a
soulless Void,
Thrown back once more into
unthinking dreams,
Earth wheeled abandoned in
the hollow gulfs
Forgetful of her spirit and
her fate.
The impassive skies were
neutral, empty, still.
Then something in the inscrutable
darkness stirred; (30)
A nameless movement, an
unthought Idea
Insistent, dissatisfied,
without an aim,
Something that wished but
knew not how to be,
Teased the Inconscient to
wake Ignorance.
A throe that came and left a
quivering trace,
Gave room for an old tired
want unfilled,
At peace in its subconscient
moonless cave
To raise its head and look
for absent light,
Straining closed eyes of
vanished memory,
Like one who searches for a
bygone self (40)
And only meets the corpse of
his desire.
It was as though even in this
Nought's profound,
Even in this ultimate
dissolution's core
There lurked an unremembering
entity,
Survivor of a slain and
buried past
Condemned to resume the
effort and the pang,
Reviving in another frustrate
world.
An unshaped consciousness
desired light
And a blank prescience
yearned towards distant change.
As if a childlike finger laid
on a cheek (50)
Reminded of the endless need
in things
The heedless Mother of the
universe,
An infant longing clutched
the sombre Vast.
Insensibly somewhere a breach
began:
A long lone line of
hesitating hue
Like a vague smile tempting a
desert heart
Troubled the far rim of
life's obscure sleep.
Arrived from the other side
of boundlessness
An eye of deity pierced
through the dumb deeps;
A scout in a reconnaissance
from the sun, (60)
It seemed amid a heavy cosmic
rest,
The torpor of a sick and
weary world,
To seek for a spirit sole and
desolate
Too fallen to recollect
forgotten bliss.
Intervening in a mindless
universe,
Its message crept through the
reluctant hush
Calling the adventure of
consciousness and joy
And, conquering Nature's
disillusioned breast,
Compelled renewed consent to
see and feel.
A thought was sown in the
unsounded Void, (70)
A sense was born within the
darkness' depths,
A memory quivered in the
heart of Time
As if a soul long dead were
moved to live:
But the oblivion that
succeeds the fall,
Had blotted the crowded
tablets of the past,
And all that was destroyed
must be rebuilt
And old experience laboured
out once more.
A11 can be done if the
God-touch is there.
A hope stole in that hardly
dared to be
Amid the Night's forlorn
indifference. (80)
As if solicited in an alien
world
With timid and hazardous
instinctive grace,
Orphaned and driven out to
seek a home,
An errant marvel with no
place to live,
Into a far-off nook of heaven
there came
A slow miraculous gesture's
dim appeal.
The persistent thrill of a
transfiguring touch
Persuaded the inert black
quietude
And beauty and wonder
disturbed the fields of God.
A wandering hand of pale
enchanted light (90)
That glowed along a fading
moment's brink,
Fixed with gold panel and
opalescent hinge
A gate of dreams ajar on
mystery's verge.
One lucent comer windowing
hidden things
Forced the world's blind
immensity to sight.
The darkness failed and
slipped like a falling cloak
From the reclining body of a
god.
Then through the pallid rift
that seemed at first
Hardly enough for a trickle
from the suns,
Outpoured the revelation and
the flame. (100)
The brief perpetual sign recurred
above.
A glamour from the unreached
transcendences
Iridescent with the glory of
the Unseen,
A message from the unknown
immortal Light
Ablaze upon creation's
quivering edge,
Dawn built her aura of
magnificent hues
And buried its seed of
grandeur in the hours,
An instant's visitor the
godhead shone:
On life's thin border awhile
the Vision stood
And bent over earth's
pondering forehead curve. (110)
Interpreting a recondite
beauty and bliss
In colour's hieroglyphs of
mystic sense,
It wrote the lines of a
significant myth
Telling of a greatness of
spiritual dawns,
A brilliant code penned with
the sky for page.
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; (120)
Infinity's centre, a Face of
rapturous calm
Parted the eternal lids that
open heaven;
A Form from far beatitudes
seemed to near.
Ambassadress twixt eternity
and change,
The omniscient Goddess leaned
across the breadths
That wrap the fated
journeyings of the stars
And saw the spaces ready for
her feet.
Once she half looked behind
for her veiled sun,
Then, thoughtful, went to her
immortal work.
Earth felt the Imperishable's
passage close: (130)
The waking ear of Nature
heard her steps
And wideness turned to her
its limitless eye,
And, scattered on sealed
depths, her luminous smile
Kindled to fire the silence
of the worlds.
All grew a consecration and a
rite.
Air was a vibrant link
between earth and heaven;
The wide-winged hymn of a
great priestly wind
Arose and failed upon the
altar hills;
The high boughs prayed in a
revealing sky.
Here where our half-lit
ignorance skirts the gulfs (140)
On the dumb bosom of the
ambiguous earth,
Here where one knows not even
the step in front
And Truth has her throne on
the shadowy back of doubt,
On this anguished and
precarious field of toil
Outspread beneath some large
indifferent gaze,
Impartial witness to our joy
and bale,
Our prostrate soil bore the
awakening ray.
Here too the vision and
prophetic gleam
Lit into miracles common
meaningless shapes;
Then the divine afflatus,
spent, withdrew, (150)
Unwanted, fading from the
mortal's range.
A sacred yearning lingered in
its trace,
The worship of a Presence and
a Power
Too perfect to be held by
death-bound hearts,
The prescience of a
marvellous birth to come.
Only a little the God-light
can stay:
Spiritual beauty illumining
human sight
Lines with its passion and
mystery Matter's mask
And squanders eternity on a
beat of Time.
As when a soul draws near the
sill of birth, (160)
Adjoining mortal time to
Timelessness,
A spark of deity lost in
Matter's crypt
Its lustre vanishes in the
inconscient planes,
That transitory glow of magic
fire
So now dissolved in bright
accustomed air.
The message ceased and waned
the messenger.
The single Call, the
uncompanioned Power,
Drew back into some far-off
secret world
The hue and marvel of the
supernal beam:
She looked no more on our
mortality. (170)
The excess of beauty natural
to God-kind
Cou1d not uphold its claim on
time-born eyes;
Too mystic-real for
space-tenancy
Her body of glory was
expunged from heaven:
The rarity and wonder lived
no more.
There was the common light of
earthly day.
Affranchised from the respite
of fatigue
Once more the rumour of the
speed of Life
Pursued the cycles of her
blinded quest.
A11 sprang to their unvarying
daily acts; (180)
The thousand peoples of the
soil and tree
Obeyed the unforeseeing
instant's urge,
And, leader here with his
uncertain mind,
Alone who stares at the
future's covered face,
Man lifted up the burden of
his fate.
And Savitri too awoke among
these tribes
That hastened to join the
brilliant Summoner's chant
And, lured by the beauty of
the apparent ways,
Acclaimed their portion of
ephemeral joy. (190)
Akin to the eternity whence
she came,
No part she took in this
small happiness;
A mighty stranger in the
human field,
The embodied Guest within
made no response.
The call that wakes the leap
of human mind,
Its chequered eager motion of
pursuit,
Its fluttering-hued illusion
of desire,
Visited her heart like a
sweet alien note.
Time's message of brief light
was not for her.
In her there was the anguish
of the gods (200)
Imprisoned in our transient
human mould,
The deathless conquered by
the death of things.
A vaster Nature's joy had
once been hers,
But long could keep not its
gold heavenly hue
Or stand upon this brittle
earthly base.
A narrow movement on Time's
deep abysm,
Life's fragile littleness
denied the power,
The proud and conscious
wideness and the bliss
She had brought with her into
the human form,
The calm delight that weds
one soul to all, (210)
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 her rich
divinity,
Her self and all she was she
had lent to men,
Hoping her greater being to
implant
That heaven might native grow
on mortal soil. (220)
Hard is it to persuade
earth-nature's change;
Mortality bears ill the
eternal's touch:
It fears the pure divine
intolerance
Of that assault of ether and
of fire;
It murmurs at its sorrowless
happiness,
Almost with hate repels the
light it brings;
It trembles at its naked
power of Truth
And the might and sweetness
of its absolute Voice.
Inflicting on the heights the
abysm's law,
It sullies with its mire
heaven's messengers: (230)
Its thorns of fallen nature
are the defence
1It turns against the saviour
hands of Grace;
It meets the sons of God with
death and pain.
A glory of lightnings
traversing the earth-scene,
Their sun-thoughts fading,
darkened by ignorant minds,
Their work betrayed, their
good to evil turned,
The cross their payment for
the crown they gave,
Only they leave behind a
splendid Name.
A fire has come and touched
men's hearts and gone;
A few have caught flame and
risen to greater life. (240)
Too unlike the world she came
to help and save,
Her greatness weighed upon
its ignorant breast,
And from its deep 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
abode,
Outcast from her inborn
felicity,
Accepting life's obscure
terrestrial robe, (250)
Hiding herself even from
those she loved,
The godhead greater by a human
fate.
A dark foreknowledge
separated her
From all of whom she was the
star and stay;
Too great to impart the peril
and the pain,
In her torn depths she kept
the grief to come.
As one who watching over men
left blind
Takes up the load of an
unwitting race,
Harbouring a foe whom with
her heart she must feed,
Unknown her act, unknown the
doom she faced, (260)
Unhelped she must foresee and
dread and dare.
The long-foreknown and fatal
mom was here
Bringing a noon that seemed
like every noon.
For Nature walks upon her
mighty way
Unheeding when she breaks a
soul, a life;
Leaving her slain behind she
travels on:
Man only marks and God's
all-seeing eyes.
Even in this moment of her
soul's despair,
In its grim rendezvous with
death and fear,
No cry broke from her lips,
no call for aid; (270)
She told the secret of her
woe to none:
Calm was her face and courage
kept her mute.
Yet only her outward self
suffered and strove;
Even her humanity was half
divine:
Her spirit opened to the
Spirit in all,
Her nature felt all Nature as
its own.
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; (280)
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 mind, a world-wide
heart,
To the lone Immortal's
unshared work she rose.
At first life grieved not in
her burdened breast:
On the lap of earth's
original somnolence
Inert, released into
forgetfulness
Prone it reposed, unconscious
on mind's verge, (290)
Obtuse and tranquil like the
stone and star.
In a deep cleft of silence
twixt two realms
She lay remote from grief,
unsawn by care,
Nothing recalling of the
sorrow here.
Then a slow faint remembrance
shadowlike moved,
And sighing she laid her hand
upon her bosom
And recognised the close and
lingering ache,
Deep, quiet, old, made
natural to its place,
But knew not why it was there
nor whence it came.
The Power that kindles mind
was still withdrawn: (300)
Heavy, unwilling were life's
servitors
Like workers with no wages of
delight;
Sullen, the torch of sense
refused to burn;
The unassisted brain found
not its past.
Only a vague earth-nature
held the frame.
But now she stirred, her life
shared the cosmic load.
At the summons of her body's
voiceless call
Her strong far-winging spirit
travelled back,
Back to the yoke of ignorance
and fate,
Back to the labour and stress
of mortal days, (310)
Lighting a pathway through
strange symbol dreams
Across the ebbing of the seas
of sleep.
Her house of Nature felt an
unseen sway,
Illumined swiftly were life's
darkened rooms,
And memory's casements opened
on the hours
And the tired feet of thought
approached her doors.
All came back to her: Earth
and Love and Doom,
The ancient disputants,
encircled her
Like giant figures wrestling
in the night:
The godheads from the dim
Inconscient born (320)
Awoke to struggle and the
pang divine,
And in the shadow of her
flaming heart,
At the sombre centre of the
dire debate,
A guardian of the unconsoled
abyss
Inheriting the long agony of
the globe,
A stone-still figure of high
and godlike Pain
Stared into space with fixed
regardless eyes
That saw grief's timeless
depths but not life's goal.
Afflicted by his harsh
divinity,
Bound to his throne, he
waited unappeased (330)
The daily oblation of her
unwept tears.
All the fierce question of
man's hours relived.
The sacrifice of suffering
and desire
Earth offers to the immortal
Ecstasy
Began again beneath the
eternal Hand.
Awake she endured the
moments' serried march
And looked on this green
smiling dangerous world,
And heard the ignorant cry of
living things.
Amid the trivial sounds, the
unchanging scene
Her soul arose confronting
Time and Fate. (340)
Immobile in herself, she
gathered force.
This was the day when
Satyavan must die.