90: A crimson seed of God’s felicity

A Spiritual Biography of Savitri

 

 

The measure of that subtle music ceased.

 

Down with a hurried swimming floating lapse

Through unseen worlds and bottomless spaces forced

Sank like a star the soul of Savitri.

 

Amidst a laughter of unearthly lyres

She heard around her nameless voices cry

Triumphing, an innumerable sound.

 

A choir of laughing winds to meet her came.

 

She bore the burden of infinity

And felt the stir of all ethereal space.

 

Pursuing her in her fall, implacably sweet,

A face was over her which seemed a youth's,

Symbol of all the beauty eyes see not,

Crowned as with peacock plumes of gorgeous hue

Framing a sapphire, whose heart-disturbing smile

Insatiably attracted to delight,

Voluptuous to the embraces of her soul.

 

Changed in its shape, yet rapturously the same,

It grew a woman's dark and beautiful

Like a mooned night with drifting star-gemmed clouds,

A shadowy glory and a stormy depth,

Turbulent in will and terrible in love.

 

Eyes in which Nature's blind ecstatic life

Sprang from some spirit's passionate content,

Missioned her to the whirling dance of earth.

 

Amidst the headlong rapture of her fall

Held like a bird in a child's satisfied hands,

In an enamoured grasp her spirit strove

Admitting no release till Time should end,

And, as the fruit of the mysterious joy,

She kept within her strong embosoming soul

Like a flower hidden in the heart of spring

The soul of Satyavan drawn down by her

Inextricably in that mighty lapse.

 

Invisible heavens in a thronging flight

Soared past her as she fell.

 

Then all the blind

And near attraction of the earth compelled

Fearful rapidities of downward bliss.

 

Lost in the giddy proneness of that speed,

Whirled, sinking, overcome she disappeared

Like a leaf spinning from the tree of heaven,

In broad unconsciousness as in a pool;

A hospitable softness drew her in

Into a wonder of miraculous depths,

Above her closed a darkness of great wings

And she was buried in a mother's breast.

 

Then from a timeless plane that watches Time,

A Spirit gazed out upon destiny,

In its endless moment saw the ages pass.

 

All still was in a silence of the gods.

 

The prophet moment covered limitless Space

And cast into the heart of hurrying Time

A diamond light of the Eternal's peace,

A crimson seed of God's felicity;

A glance from the gaze fell of undying Love.

 

A wonderful face looked out with deathless eyes;

A hand was seen drawing the golden bars

That guard the imperishable secrecies.

 

A key turned in a mystic lock of Time.

 

But where the silence of the gods had passed,

A greater harmony from the stillness born

Surprised with joy and sweetness yearning hearts,

An ecstasy and a laughter and a cry.

 

A power leaned down, a happiness found its home.

Over wide earth brooded the infinite bliss.

 

 

Savitri, pp. 711-12