The call of ‘the adventure of consciousness and joy’ has gone all round compelling the ‘renewed consent to see and feel’.

A thought was sown in the unsounded Void,

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.

As a result so many things take place. First, in the Void which was unfathomed, unplumbed, a thought is sown. It will bear fruit later on. In what was insensible, sense is born. All had been forgotten; now a memory quivers, stirs, in the heart of time. It is in relation to time that one forgets. Now there is a thought, there is a sense, there is a memory. It is as if a soul that has been dead for long is again come to life.

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.

The previous cycle has been blotted out. In that oblivion the crowded records of the past have been completely lost. All that old experience has to be gained once again. The sense may have awakened, the thought may have risen, but all of the old achievement has been wiped out. To revive it is a formidable task, but not impossible. For,

All can be done if the God-touch is there.

However impossible, however challenging a task may appear, it is so only to the human eye, only to human effort. If the will of God is there, Grace is there, all can be achieved.

This line is what we would call an epigram. There are hundreds of epigrams in Savitri, single-line epigrams. An epigram is a pithy saying in a sentence or a line summing up a profound message, a deep wisdom. I remember, some years ago those of us who were studying Savitri here, collected about 300 of these epigrams, it was issued as Epigrams in Savitri. And this is the first epigram in the poem. Nothing is impossible. It is only when we depend upon ourselves that things are difficult. But if we invoke the Grace and link ourselves to it, the situation changes. So leave out nothing simply because it appears impossible; call in the help of God.

A hope stole in that hardly dared to be
Amid the Night's forlorn indifference.

In such a situation, a hope slowly enters the scene for the first time. But that hope hardly dares to be. The environment is so indifferent and negative that it is not sure that it can survive. It is never sure when it wil be obliterated.

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.

Here is an important statement which at first glance baffles the reader by its construction. Sri Aurobindo explains it at length. Something from above comes searching, with a look of appeal, hoping to live in what is to it an alien world. The appeal is from elsewhere; it is an appeal for life, for hope, for change. It comes into that alien world, soliciting, wanting an acceptance. There is a feeling of timidity, it is aware of the riskiness of its embassy. But there is an instinctive grace about it. It does not cringe, it comes with a natural grace. It comes as if it is orphaned, driven out to seek a home on this earth. It is a marvel on the move. It slowly appears in some distant corner of the sky. It is a ‘miraculous gesture’, not something natural to this Night. It is miraculous and there can be some hope at all. As a result of all this:

The persistent thrill of a transfiguring touch

Persuaded the inert black quietude

And beauty and wonder disturbed the fields of God.

There is a constant play of that ray of light, ray of consciousness. Its very touch is thrilling and transfiguring. This touch persuades the black, inert quietude, the Inconscient, to respond. Sri Aurobindo explains that he uses the word ‘quietude’ deliberately to indicate something spiritual about this black inertness. The fields of God are stirred with beauty and wonder. Till now there was no beauty, there was nothing to wonder at. But as a result of this transfiguring touch, there is once again beauty, once again wonder. At that moment in the sky

A wandering hand of pale enchanted light

That glowed along a fading moment's brink,

Fixed with gold panel and opalescent hinge

A gate of dreams ajar on mystery's verge.

There is a moving hand, shining with an ‘enchanted’, wondrous, ‘pale’, not very bright, light on the edge of that passing moment. And what does it do? It opens a door, a window, on the verge of that mystery, and fixes it with gold panel, a gold bright frame whose hinge is ‘opalescent’, translucent. The hand moves and fixes a door opening on the dreams and visions of the Mystery.

One lucent corner windowing hidden things

Forced the world's blind immensity to sight.

When light breaks through that window which opens the hidden things to sight, the immense darkness that is around is seen in its mass. The ray of light shows up the vast extent of the world’s blind darkness.

The darkness failed and slipped like a falling cloak

From the reclining body of a god.

Imagine there is a God with a cloak loosely thrown over his body. When he is reclining, that cloak naturally slips. Similarly here the darkness slips like a cloak from the body of a God. Where there was darkness, where there was the night, there is the outbreak of light. So the night fails revealing the body of a God. There is a suggestion that the body of God is there behind the darkness that was.