Savitri BOOK VI: The Book of Fate 443-44-45

CANTO II: The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain

Section 2

Where Ignorance is, there suffering too must come;

Thy grief is a cry of darkness to the Light;

Pain was the first-born of the Inconscience

Which was thy body’s dumb original base;

Already slept there pain’s subconscient shape:

A shadow in a shadowy tenebrous womb,

Till life shall move, it waits to wake and be.

In one caul with joy came forth the dreadful Power.

In life’s breast it was born hiding its twin;

But pain came first, then only joy could be.

Pain ploughed the first hard ground of the world-drowse.

By pain a spirit started from the clod,

By pain Life stirred in the subliminal deep.

Interned, submerged, hidden in Matter’s trance

Awoke to itself the dreamer, sleeping Mind;

It made a visible realm out of its dreams,

It drew its shapes from the subconscient depths,

Then turned to look upon the world it had made.

By pain and joy, the bright and tenebrous twins,

The inanimate world perceived its sentient soul,

Else had the Inconscient never suffered change.

Pain is the hammer of the Gods to break

A dead resistance in the mortal’s heart,

His slow inertia as of living stone.

If the heart were not forced to want and weep,

His soul would have lain down content, at ease,

And never thought to exceed the human start

And never learned to climb towards the Sun.

This earth is full of labour, packed with pain;

Throes of an endless birth coerce her still;

The centuries end, the ages vainly pass

And yet the Godhead in her is not born.

The ancient Mother faces all with joy,

Calls for the ardent pang, the grandiose thrill;

For with pain and labour all creation comes.