A Spiritual Biography of Savitri

34: I am the Madran

 

Out of the voiceless mystery of the past

In a present ignorant of forgotten bonds

These spirits met upon the roads of Time.

Yet in the heart their secret conscious selves

At once aware grew of each other warned

By the first call of a delightful voice

And a first vision of the destined face.

As when being cries to being from its depths

Behind the screen of the external sense

And strives to find the heart-disclosing word,

The passionate speech revealing the soul’s need,

But the mind’s ignorance veils the inner sight,

Only a little breaks through our earth-made bounds,

So now they met in that momentous hour,

So utter the recognition in the deeps,

The remembrance lost, the oneness felt and missed.

Thus Satyavan spoke first to Savitri:

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

Yet thy voice has wakened my heart to an unknown bliss,

Immortal or mortal only in thy frame,

For more than earth speaks to me from thy soul

And more than earth surrounds me in thy gaze,

How art thou named among the sons of men?

Whence hast thou dawned filling my spirit’s days,

Brighter than summer, brighter than my flowers,

Into the lonely borders of my life,

O Sunlight moulded like a golden maid?

I know that mighty gods are friends of earth.

Amid the pageantries of day and dusk,

Long have I travelled with my pilgrim soul

Moved by the marvel of familiar things.

Earth could not hide from me the powers she veils:

Even though moving mid an earthly scene

And the common surfaces of terrestrial things,

My vision saw unblinded by her forms;

The Godhead looked at me from familiar scenes.

I witnessed the virgin bridals of the dawn

Behind the glowing curtains of the sky

Or vying in joy with the bright morning's steps

I paced along the slumberous coasts of morn,

Or the gold desert of the sunlight crossed

Traversing great wastes of splendour and of fire,

Or met the moon gliding amazed through heaven

In the uncertain wideness of the night,

Or the stars marched on their long sentinel routes

Pointing their spears through the infinitudes,

The day and dusk revealed to me hidden shapes;

Figures have come to me from secret shores

And happy faces looked from ray and flame.

I have heard strange voices cross the ether’s waves,

The centaur’s wizard song has thrilled my ear;

I glimpsed the Apsaras bathing in the pools

And saw the wood-nymphs peering through the leaves;

The winds have shown to me their trampling lords,

I have beheld the princes of the Sun

Burning in thousand-pillared homes of light.

So now my mind could dream and my heart fear

That from some wonder-couch beyond our air

Risen in a wide morning of the gods

Thou drov’st thy horses from the Thunderer’s worlds.

Although to heaven thy beauty seems allied,

Much rather would my thoughts rejoice to know

That mortal sweetness smiles between thy lips

And thy heart can beat beneath a human gaze

And thy aureate bosom quiver with a look

And its tumult answer to an earth-born voice.

If our time-vexed affections thou canst feel,

Earth’s ease of simple things can satisfy,

If thy glance can dwell content on earthly soil,

And this celestial summary of delight,

Thy golden body, dally with fatigue

Oppressing with its grace our terrain, while

The frail sweet passing taste of earthly food

Delays thee and the torrent's leaping wine,

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

Close is my father’s creepered hermitage

Screened by the tall ranks of these silent kings,

Sung to by voices of the hue-robed choirs

Whose chants repeat transcribed in music's notes

The passionate coloured lettering of the boughs

And fill the hours with their melodious cry.

Amid the welcome-hum of many bees

Invade our honied kingdom of the woods;

There let me lead thee into an opulent life.

Bare, simple is the sylvan hermit-life;

Yet is it clad with the jewelry of earth.

Wild winds run—visitors midst the swaying tops,

Through the calm days heaven’s sentinels of peace

Couched on a purple robe of sky above

Look down on a rich secrecy and hush

And the chambered nuptial waters chant within.

Enormous, whispering, many-formed around

High forest gods have taken in their arms

The human hour, a guest of their centuried pomps.

Apparelled are the morns in gold and green,

Sunlight and shadow tapestry the walls

To make a resting chamber fit for thee.”

Awhile she paused as if hearing still his voice,

Unwilling to break the charm, then slowly spoke.

Musing she answered: “I am Savitri,

Princess of Madra. Who art thou? What name

Musical on earth expresses thee to men?

What trunk of kings watered by fortunate streams

Has flowered at last upon one happy branch?

Why is thy dwelling in the pathless wood

Far from the deeds thy glorious youth demands,

Haunt of the anchorites and earth's wilder broods,

Where only with thy witness self thou roam’st

In Nature's green unhuman loneliness

Surrounded by enormous silences

And the blind murmur of primeval calms?”

And Satyavan replied to Savitri:

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

King Dyumathsena once, the Shalwa, reigned

Through all the tract which from behind these tops

Passing its days of emerald delight

In trusting converse with the traveller winds

Turns, looking back towards the southern heavens,

And leans its flank upon the musing hills.

But equal fate removed her covering hand,

A living night enclosed the strong man's paths,

Heaven's brilliant gods recalled their careless gifts,

Took from blank eyes their glad and helping ray

And led the uncertain goddess from his side.

Outcast from empire of the outer light,

Lost to the comradeship of seeing men,

He sojourns in two solitudes, within

And in the solemn rustle of the woods.

Son of that king, I, Satyavan, have lived

Contented, for not yet of thee aware,

In my high peopled loneliness of spirit

And this huge vital murmur kin to me,

Nursed by the vastness, pupil of solitude.

 

 

Savitri, pp. 400-03