92: What high change is in thee, O Savitri?

A Spiritual Biography of Savitri

 

 

Then filled with the glory of their happiness

They rose and with safe clinging fingers locked

Hung on each other in a silent look.

 

But he with a new wonder in his heart

And a new flame of worship in his eyes:

“What high change is in thee, O Savitri?

 

Bright

Ever thou wast, a goddess still and pure,

Yet dearer to me by thy sweet human parts

Earth gave thee making thee yet more divine.

 

My adoration mastered, my desire

Bent down to make its subject, my daring clasped,

Claiming by body and soul my life's estate,

Rapture's possession, love's sweet property,

A statue of silence in my templed spirit,

A yearning godhead and a golden bride.

 

But now thou seemst almost too high and great

For mortal worship; Time lies below thy feet

And the whole world seems only a part of thee,

Thy presence the hushed heaven I inhabit,

And thou lookst on me in the gaze of the stars,

Yet art the earthly keeper of my soul,

My life a whisper of thy dreaming thoughts,

My morns a gleaming of thy spirit's wings,

And day and night are of thy beauty part.

 

Hast thou not taken my heart to treasure it

In the secure environment of thy breast?

 

Awakened from the silence and the sleep,

I have consented for thy sake to be.

 

By thee I have greatened my mortal arc of life,

But now far heaven’s unmapped infinitudes

Thou hast brought me thy illimitable gift.

 

If to fill these thou lift thy sacred flight,

My human earth will still demand thy bliss:

Make still my life through thee a song of joy

And all my silence wide and deep with thee.”

 

A heavenly queen consenting to his will,

She clasped his feet, by her enshrining hair

Enveloped in a velvet cloak of love,

And answered softly like a murmuring lute:

“All now is changed, yet all is still the same.

 

Lo, we have looked upon the face of God,

Our life has opened with divinity.

 

We have borne identity with the Supreme

And known his meaning in our mortal lives.

 

Our love has grown greater by that mighty touch

And learnt its heavenly significance,

Yet nothing is lost of mortal love's delight.

 

Heaven's touch fulfils but cancels not our earth:

Our bodies need each other in the same last;

Still in our breasts repeat heavenly secret rhythm

Our human heart-beats passionately close.

 

Still am I she who came to thee mid the murmur

Of sunlit leaves upon this forest verge;

I am the Madran, I am Savitri.

 

All that I was before, I am to thee still,

Close comrade of thy thoughts and hopes and toils,

All happy contraries I would join for thee.

 

All sweet relations marry in our life,

I am thy kingdom even as thou art mine,

The sovereign and the slave of thy desire,

Thy prone possessor, the sister of thy soul

And mother of thy wants; thou art my world,

The earth I need, the heaven my thoughts desire,

The world I inhabit and the god I adore.

 

Thy body is my body's counterpart

Whose every limb my answering limb desires,

Whose heart is key to all my heart-beats,—this

I am and thou to me, O Satyavan.

 

Our wedded walk through life begins anew,

No gladness lost, no depth of mortal joy;

Let us go through this new world that is the same.

 

For it is given back, but it is known,

A playing-ground and dwelling-house of God

Who hides himself in bird and beast and man

Sweetly to find himself again by love,

By oneness. His presence leads the rhythms of life

That seek for mutual joy in spite of pain.

 

We have each other found, O Satyavan,

In the great light of the discovered soul.

 

Let us go back, for eve is in the skies.

 

Now grief is dead and serene bliss remains

The heart of all our days for ever more.

 

Lo, all these beings in this wonderful world!

Let us give joy to all, for joy is ours.

 

For not for ourselves alone our spirits came

Out of the veil of the Unmanifest,

Out of the deep immense Unknowable

Upon the ignorant breast of dubious earth

Into the ways of labouring seeking men,

Two fires that burn towards that parent Sun,

Two rays that travel to the original Light.

 

To lead man's soul towards Truth and God we are born,

To draw the chequered scheme of mortal life

Into some semblance of the Immortal's plan,

To shape it closer to an image of God,

A little nearer to the Idea divine.”

 

She closed her arms about his breast and head

As if to keep him on her bosom worn

For ever through the journeying of the years.

 

So for a while they stood entwined, their kiss

And passion-tranced embrace a meeting point

In their commingling spirits, one for ever,

Two-souled, two-bodied for the joy of Time.

 

Then hand in hand they left that solemn place

Full now of mute unusual memories,

To the green distance of their sylvan home

Returning slowly through the forest's heart:

Round them the afternoon to evening changed;

Light slipped down to the brightly sleeping verge,

And the birds came back winging to their nests,

And day and night leaned to each other's arms.

 

 

Savitri, pp. 718-21