91: Human she was once more, earth's Savitri

A Spiritual Biography of Savitri

 

 

Out of abysmal trance her spirit woke.

 

Lain on the earth-mother's calm inconscient breast

She saw the green-clad branches lean above

Guarding her sleep with their enchanted life,

And overhead a blue-winged ecstasy

Fluttered from bough to bough with high-pitched call.

 

Into the magic secrecy of the woods

Peering through an emerald lattice-window of leaves,

In indolent skies reclined, the thinning day

Turned to its slow fall into evening's peace.

 

She pressed the living body of Satyavan:

On her body's wordless joy to be and breathe

She bore the blissful burden of his head

Between her breasts' warm labour of delight,

The waking gladness of her members felt

The weight of heaven in his limbs, a touch

Summing the whole felicity of things,

And all her life was conscious of his life

And all her being rejoiced enfolding his.

 

The immense remoteness of her trance had passed;

Human she was once more, earth's Savitri,

Yet felt in her illimitable change.

 

A power dwelt in her soul too great for earth,

A bliss lived in her heart too large for heaven.

 

Light too intense for thought and love too boundless

For earth's emotions lit her skies of mind

And spread through her deep and happy seas of soul.

 

All that is sacred in the world drew near

To her divine passivity of mood.

 

A marvellous voice of silence breathed its thoughts.

 

All things in Time and Space she had taken for hers;

In her they moved, by her they lived and were,

The whole wide world clung to her for delight,

Created for her rapt embrace of love.

 

Now in her spaceless self released from bounds

Unnumbered years seemed moments long drawn out,

The brilliant time-flakes of eternity.

 

Outwingings of a bird from its bright home,

Her earthly morns were radiant flights of joy.

 

Boundless she was, a form of infinity.

 

Absorbed no longer by the moment's beat

Her spirit the unending future felt

And lived with all the unbeginning past.

 

Her life was a dawn's victorious opening,

The past and unborn days had joined their dreams,

Old vanished eves and far arriving noons

Hinted to her a vision of prescient hours.

 

Supine in musing bliss she lay awhile

Given to the wonder of a waking trance;

Half-risen then she sent her gaze around,

As if to recover old sweet trivial threads,

Old happy thoughts, small treasured memories,

And weave them into one immortal day.

 

Ever she held on the paradise of her breast

Her lover charmed into a fathomless sleep,

Lain like an infant spirit unaware

Lulled on the verge of two consenting worlds.

 

But soon she leaned down over her loved to call

His mind back to her with her travelling touch

On his closed eyelids; settled was her still look

Of strong delight, not yearning now, but large

With limitless joy or sovereign last content,

Pure, passionate with the passion of the gods.

 

Desire stirred not its wings; for all was made

An overarching of celestial rays

Like the absorbed control of sky on plain,

Heaven's leaning down to embrace from all sides earth,

A quiet rapture, a vast security.

 

Then sighing to her touch the soft-winged sleep

Rose hovering from his flower-like lids and flew

Murmurous away.

 

Awake, he found her eyes

Waiting for his, and felt her hands, and saw

The earth his home given back to him once more

And her made his again, his passion's all.

 

With his arms' encircling hold around her locked,

A living knot to make possession close,

He murmured with hesitating lips her name,

And vaguely recollecting wonder cried,

“Whence hast thou brought me captive back, love-chained,

To thee and sunlight's walls, O golden beam

And casket of all sweetness, Savitri,

Godhead and woman, moonlight of my soul?

 

For surely I have travelled in strange worlds

By thee companioned, a pursuing spirit,

Together we have disdained the gates of night;

I have turned away from the celestial’s joy

And heaven's insufficient without thee.

 

Where now has passed that formidable Shape

Which rose against us, the Spirit of the Void,

Claiming the world for Death and Nothingness,

Denying God and Soul?

 

Or was all a dream

Or a vision seen in a spiritual sleep,

A symbol of the oppositions of Time

Or a mind-lit beacon of significance

In some stress of darkness lighting on the Way

Or guiding a swimmer through the straits of Death,

Or finding with the succour of its ray

In a gully mid the crowded streets of Chance

The soul that into the world-adventure came,

A scout and voyager from Eternity?”

 

But she replied, “Our parting was the dream;

We are together, we live, O Satyavan.

 

Look round thee and behold, glad and unchanged

Our home, this forest, with its thousand cries

And the whisper of the wind among the leaves

And, through rifts in emerald scene, the evening sky,

God's canopy of blue sheltering our lives,

And the birds crying for heart's happiness,

Winged poets of our solitary reign,

Our friends on earth where we are king and queen.

 

Only our souls have left Death's night behind

Changed by a mighty dream's reality,

Illumined by the light of symbol worlds

And the stupendous summit self of things,

And stood at Godhead's gates limitless, free.”

 

 

Savitri, pp. 715-18