A Rescue Dog: A watch-dog of the spirit’s sense-railed house

A smile from the Preserver of the Worlds
Sent down of old this guardian Mind to earth
That all might stand in their fixed changeless type
And from their secular posture never move.

One sees it circling faithful to its task,
Tireless in an assigned tradition’s round;
In decayed and crumbling offices of Time
It keeps close guard in front of custom’s wall,
Or in an ancient Night’s dim environs
It dozes on a little courtyard’s stones
And barks at every unfamiliar light
As at a foe who would break up its home,
A watch-dog of the spirit’s sense-railed house
Against intruders from the Invisible,
Nourished on scraps of life and Matter’s bones
In its kennel of objective certitude.

And yet behind it stands a cosmic might:
A measured Greatness keeps its vaster plan,
A fathomless sameness rhythms the tread of life;
The stars’ changeless orbits furrow inert Space,
A million species follow one mute Law.

Savitri, SF Edition, pp. 282-83