Readings in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol, Book IV, Canto I The Birth and Childhood of the Flame

0:01 A Maynard of the cycles of desire around a light she must not dare to touch. Hastening toward a far off unknown goal, Earth followed the endless journey of the sun, A mind but half awake in the swing of the void, on the bosom of inconscience dreamed out life. And bore this finite world of thought and deed across the immobile trance of the infinite. A vast, immutable silence with her ran prisoner of speed upon a jeweled wheel. She communed with the Mystic heart in space amid the ambiguous stillness of the stars. She moved towards some undisclosed event, and her rhythm measured the long whirl of time in ceaseless motion round the purple rim, day after day, sped by like coloured spokes and through a glamour of shifting hues of air. The seasons drew in link significant dance, the symbol pageant of the changing year.

1:23 Across the burning languor of the soil paced Summer with his pomp of violent noons, and stamped his tyranny of torrid light and the blue seal of a great burnished sky. Next, through its fiery swoon or clotted knot, rain tide burst in upon torn wings of heat, startled with lightnings, airs, unquiet drows. Lashed with life, giving streams the torpid soil overcast with flare and sound and storm wing dark, the star defended doors of heaven's dim sleep or from the gold eye of her paramour Covered with packed cloud veils the earth's brown face. Armies of revolution crossed the time field. The clouds unending March besieged the world. Tempest Pronuncia Mentos claimed The sky and Thunder drums announced the embattled gods.

2:29 The traveller from unquiet neighboring seas, the dense mained monsoon rode neighing through earth's hours thick. Now the emissary Javelins enormous lightning split the horizons rim and. Hurled from the quarters, as from contending camps married heavens, edges steep and bare and blind, a surge and hiss an onset of huge rain. The long straight sleep, drift, clamors of winged storm charge, throngs of wind, faces rushing of wind, feet hurrying, swept through the prone afflicted planes.

3:17 Evans waters trailed and dribbled through the drowned land. Then all was a siff stride, a sibilant race, or all was tempests shout and waters fall. A dibness sagged on the Gray floor of day. It's dingy, sprawling length joined morn to Eve, wallowing in sludge and shower. It reached black, dark. Day 1/2 Darkness wore as its dull dress. Light looked into dawn's tarnished glass and met its own face. There, twin to 1/2, lit nights downpour and drip and seeping. Mist swayed all and turned dry, soil to bog and reeking mud. Earth was a quagmire, heaven a dismal block. None saw through dank drenched weeks the dungeon sun. Even when no turmoil vexed air, somber rest or a faint ray glimmered through weeping clouds as a sad smile gleams veiled by returning chair.

4:31 Tears all promised brightness, failed at once denied or soon condemned, died like a brief lived hope. Than a last mass of deluge thrashed dead mire, and a subsiding mudder left all still. Or only the muddy creep of sinking floods, or only a whisper and green toss of trees. Earth's mood now changed. She lay in lulled repose. The hours went by with slow, contented tread.

5:14 A wide and tranquil air remembered peace. Earth was the comrade of a happy sun. A calmness neared as of the approach of God. A light of musing, trance lit soil and sky, and an identity and ecstasy filled meditation. Solitary heart, a dream loitered in the dumb mind of space. Time opened, its chambers of Felicity and exaltation entered, and a hope and inmost self looked up to a heavenlier height, and inmost thought kindled a hidden flame, and the inner sight adored an unseen sun. 3 thoughtful seasons passed with shining tread.

6:10 And scanning 1 by 1, the pregnant hours watched for a flame that lurked in luminous depths, the vigil of some mighty birth to come. Autumn led in the glory of her moons, and dreamed in the splendor of her Lotus pools and winter and due time laid their calm, cool hands on nature's bosom, still in 1/2 sleep. And deepened with hues of lacks and mellow ease the tranquil beauty of the weaning year then spring. An ardent lover leaped through leaves and caught the earth bride in his eager clasp.

6:55 His advent was a fire of irised hues. His arms were a circle of the arrival of joy. His voice was a call to the transcendent sphere. Whose secret touch upon our mortal lives keeps ever new. The thrill that made the world remoulds an ancient sweetness to new shapes and guards intact, unchanged by death and time. The answer of our hearts to nature's charm, and keeps forever new, yet still the same, the throb that ever wakes to the old delight. And beauty and rapture, and the joy to live. His coming brought the magic and the spell at his touch. Life's tired heart grew.

7:47 Glad and young he made joy a willing prisoner in her breast. His grasp was a young gods upon earth's limbs, changed by the passion of his divine outbreak. He made her body beautiful with his kiss. Impatient for Felicity, he came high, fluting with the coils happy voice, his Peacock turban trailing on the trees. His breath was a warm summons to delight. The dense, voluptuous Azure was his gaze. A soft celestial urge surprised the blood, rich with the instinct of God's censuous joys revealed in beauty. A cadence was abroad, insistent on the rapture thrill in life. Immortal movements touched the fleeting hours. A godlike, packed intensity of sense made it a passionate pleasure even to breathe.

8:52 All sights and voices wove a single charm. The life of the enchanted globe became a storm of sweetness and of light and song. A revel of color and of ecstasy, A hymn of rays, a litany of cries, a strain of coral. Priestly music sang and swung on the saying censor of the trees. A sacrifice of perfume filled the hours. Ashoka's burned in Crimson spots of flame, pure like the breath of an unstained desire. White Jasmine's haunted the enamored air. Pale mango blossoms fed the liquid voice of the Love Madden coil and the brown bee muttered in fragrance mid the honey buds. The sunlight was a great God's golden smile. All nature was at Beauty's Festival.