-31_Canto Three – Satyavan and Savitri.htm

In a present ignorant of forgotten bonds

Yet in the heart their secret conscious selves

By the first call of a delightful voice

As when being cries to being from its depths

And strives to find the heart-disclosing word,

But the mind’s ignorance veils the inner sight,

So now they met in that momentous hour,

The remembrance lost, the oneness felt and missed.

“O thou who com’st to me out of Time’s silences,

Immortal or mortal only in thy frame,

And more than earth surrounds me in thy gaze,

Whence hast thou dawned filling my spirit’s days,

Into the lonely borders of my life,

I know that mighty gods are friends of earth.

Long have I travelled with my pilgrim soul

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Even though moving mid an earthly scene

My vision saw unblinded by her forms;

I witnessed the virgin bridals of the dawn

Or vying in joy with the bright morning’s steps

Or the gold desert of the sunlight crossed

Or met the moon gliding amazed through heaven

Or the stars marched on their long sentinel routes

The day and dusk revealed to me hidden shapes;

And happy faces looked from ray and flame.

The Centaur’s wizard song has thrilled my ear;

I have seen the wood-nymphs peering through the leaves;

I have beheld the princes of the Sun

So now my mind could dream and my heart fear

Risen in a wide morning of the gods

Although to heaven thy beauty seems allied,

That mortal sweetness smiles between thy lids

And thy aureate bosom quiver with a look

If our time-vexed affections thou canst feel,

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If thy glance can dwell content on earthly soil,

Thy golden body, dally with fatigue

The frail sweet passing taste of earthly food

Descend. Let thy journey cease, come down to us.

Screened by the tall ranks of these silent kings,

Whose chants repeat transcribed in music’s notes

And fill the hours with their melodious cry.

Invade our honied kingdom of the woods;

Bare, simple is the sylvan hermit-life;

Wild winds run — visitors midst the swaying tops,

Couched on a purple robe of sky above

And the chambered nuptial waters chant within.

High forest gods have taken in their arms

Apparelled are the morns in gold and green,

To make a resting chamber fit for thee.”

Unwilling to break the charm, then slowly spoke.

Princess of Madra. Who art thou? What name

What trunk of kings watered by fortunate streams

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Why is thy dwelling in the pathless wood

Haunt of the anchorites and earth’s wilder broods,

In Nature’s green unhuman loneliness

And the blind murmur of primaeval calms?”

“In days when yet his sight looked clear on life,

Through all the tract which from behind these tops

In trusting converse with the traveller winds

And leans its flank upon the musing hills.

A living night enclosed the strong man’s paths,

Took from blank eyes their glad and helping ray

Outcast from empire of the outer light,

He sojourns in two solitudes, within

Son of that king, I, Satyavan, have lived

In my high-peopled loneliness of spirit

Nursed by the vastness, pupil of solitude.

I reigned in a kingdom of a nobler kind

I met the frankness of the primal earth,

In the great tapestried chambers of her state,

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Indulged by the warm mother of us all,

I lay in the wide bare embrace of heaven,

The moonbeams’ silver ecstasy at night

Lured by faint murmurings with the green-robed hours

Of winds and waters, partner of the sun’s joy,

My spirit satisfied within me knew

Whose close belongings are the earth and skies.

Aroused by some foreshadowing touch within,

The great dumb animal consciousness of earth

To live in this grandiose murmur dim and vast.

As if to a deeper country of the soul

Through an inner seeing and sense a wakening came.

All things the eye had caught in coloured lines

And in the shape it sought to seize the soul.

Moved, guided by the seeking of his touch,

Limned upon page and stone they spoke to men.

The neighing pride of rapid life that roams

Cast shapes of swiftness; trooping spotted deer

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Against the vesper sky became a song

I caught for some eternal eye the sudden

A slow swan silvering the azure lake,

Leaves trembling with the passion of the wind,

And wandering wings in blue infinity

Mountains and trees stood there like thoughts from God.

The peacock scattering on the breeze his moons

I carved my vision out of wood and stone;

And metred the rhythm-beats of infinity

I felt a covert touch, I heard a call,

Or hold between my hands the World-Mother’s feet.

That sought for fragments and in fragments lived:

And with the rest joined only fleeting ties;

Nor saw the Eternal in his secret house.

God’s watch-fires burning in the ignorant Night,

A ray prophetic of the Eternal’s sun.

There poured awakening streams of diamond light,

But still there lacked the last transcendent power

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Lived still with Death and ancient Ignorance;

But thou hast come and all will surely change:

And hear her wisdom in thy sacred voice.

My Matter shall evade the Inconscient’s trance.

It shall escape from Death and Ignorance.”

“Speak more to me, speak more, O Satyavan,

I would know thee as if we had ever lived

Speak till a light shall come into my heart

What all the deathless being in me feels.

Amidst earth’s thronging visages and forms

And Satyavan like a replying harp

Answered her questioning and let stream to her

“O golden princess, perfect Savitri,

Of all that thou hast meant to me, unknown,

In one great hour of the unveiling gods.

For now I know that all I lived and was

I look back on the meaning of myself,

Once were my days like days of other men:

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This was the width and height of mortal hope:

That lives behind Life and makes her act its scene.

A Greatness working towards a hidden end,

Something that life is not and yet must be.

Its glimmerings lighted with the abstract word

It mapped a system of the Self and God.

I turned to seize its form in visible things,

Imposed a narrow structure of world-law

A hard firm skeleton of outward Truth,

This light showed more the darknesses unsearched;

It could not analyse its cosmic Veil

And trace the pattern of his magic plans.

And knew the secret laws and sorceries

The mystery was not solved but deepened more.

But Form cannot unveil the indwelling Power;

It evoked a mood of self, invoked a sign

I lived in the ray but faced not to the sun.

And when I found the Self, I lost the world,

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The link of the finite with the Infinite,

The mystic aim for which the world was made,

But now the gold link comes to me with thy feet

For now another realm draws near with thee

A strange new world swims to me in thy gaze

A cry of spheres comes with thee and a song

And in a fierier march of moments move.

A foam-leap travelling from the waves of bliss

All with thy coming fills. Air, soil and stream

And sunlight grows a shadow of thy hue

Come nearer to me from thy car of light

For here are secret spaces made for thee

Wilt thou not make this mortal bliss thy sphere?

Enrich earth’s floors upon whose sleep we lie.

By my delight and thy own joy compelled

In the great quietness where spirits meet,

Let the dim rustling arches over thee lean;

Thy heart-beats near to mine, till there shall leap

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A moment which all murmurs shall recall

Allured to her lashes by his passionate words

Passing her lips in liquid sounds it spoke.

“O Satyavan, I have heard thee and I know;

Then down she came from her high carven car

Her many-hued raiment glistening in the light

Mixed with a glimmer of her body’s ray

Her gleaming feet upon the green-gold sward

And lightly pressed the unspoken desire of earth

Then flitting like pale-brilliant moths her hands

A load of their jewel-faces’ clustering swarms,

A candid garland set with simple forms

The stanzaed movement of a marriage hymn.

They mixed their yearning’s coloured signs and made

A sacrament of joy in treasuring palms

Then with raised hands that trembled a little now

This bond of sweetness, their bright union’s sign,

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Who has out of his mist of greatness shone

She bowed and touched his feet with worshipping hands;

And made her body the room of his delight,

He bent to her and took into his own

As if a whole rich world suddenly possessed,

An inexhaustible joy made his alone,

Around her his embrace became the sign

A first sweet summary of delight to come,

In a wide moment of two souls that meet

A river pours into a mighty sea.

To live in Him for ever and know His joy,

And all her separate self was lost in his.

He shut her into himself in a circle of bliss

A boundless isolation made them one;

And let her penetrate his very soul

As the mortal wakes into Eternity,

Thus were they in each other lost awhile,

Came into a new self and a new world.

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The world was but their twin self-finding’s scene

On the high glowing cupola of the day

While by the ministry of an auspice-hour

The wedding of the eternal Lord and Spouse

In a new act of the drama of the world

In the silence and murmur of that emerald world

Amid the choral whispering of the leaves

The natural miracle was wrought once more:

One human moment was eternal made.

Then down the narrow path where their lives had met

He led and showed to her her future world,

At the path’s end through a green cleft in the trees

And looked now first on her heart’s future home,

Adorned with creepers and red climbing flowers

Slumbering with brown body and tumbled hair

Around it stretched the forest’s anchorite mood

Then moved by the deep joy she could not speak,

Her happy voice cried out to Satyavan:

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Now of more wandering it has no need.

Which soon will lose one loved accustomed tread

For soon I shall return nor ever again

Or fate sunder our lives while life is ours.”

And under the ardour of a fiery noon

She sped swift-reined, swift-hearted but still saw

Through the cool-scented wood’s luxurious gloom

Pace towards a tranquil clearing Satyavan.

The new deep covert of her felicity,

This now remained with her, her heart’s constant scene.

END OF CANTO THREE

END OF BOOK FIVE

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