Savitri

High priests of wisdom, sweetness, might and bliss,

Discoverers of beauty's sunlit ways

And swimmers of Love's laughing fiery floods

And dancers within rapture's golden doors,

Their tread one day shall change the suffering earth

And justify the light on Nature's face.

Although Fate lingers in the high Beyond

And the work seems vain on which our heart's force was spent,

All shall be done for which our pain was borne.

Even as of old man came behind the beast

This high divine successor surely shall come

Behind man's inefficient mortal pace,

Behind his vain labour, sweat and blood and tears:

He shall know what mortal mind barely durst think,

He shall do what the heart of the mortal could not dare.

Inheritor of the toil of human time,

He shall take on him the burden of the gods;

All heavenly light shall visit the earth's thoughts,

The might of heaven shall fortify earthly hearts;

Earth's deeds shall touch the superhuman's height,

Earth's seeing widen into the infinite.

Heavy unchanged weighs still the imperfect world;

The splendid youth of Time has passed and failed;

Heavy and long are the years our labour counts

And still the seals are firm upon man's soul

And weary is the ancient Mother's heart.

O Truth defended in thy secret sun,

Voice of her mighty musings in shut heavens

On things withdrawn within her luminous depths,

O Wisdom-Splendour, Mother of the universe,

Creatrix, the Eternal's artist Bride,

Linger not long with thy transmuting hand

Pressed vainly on one golden bar of Time,

As if Time dare not open its heart to God.

O radiant fountain of the world's delight

World-free and unattainable above,

O Bliss who ever dwellst deep-hid within

While men seek thee outside and never find,

Mystery and Muse with hieratic tongue,

Incarnate the white passion of thy force,

Mission to earth some living form of thee.

One moment fill with thy eternity,

Let thy infinity in one body live,

All-Knowledge wrap one mind in seas of light,

All-Love throb single in one human heart.

Immortal, treading the earth with mortal feet

All heaven's beauty crowd in earthly limbs!

Omnipotence, girdle with the power of God

Movements and moments of a mortal will,

Pack with the eternal might one human hour

And with one gesture change all future time.

Let a great word be spoken from the heights

And one great act unlock the doors of Fate.