Savitri: Book 1 Canto 1 Section 1 from 14:19

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;

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:

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

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 of 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,

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.