“Great Nature came to her recovered child…

Free in her boundless palace I have dwelt

Indulged by the warm mother of us all,

Reared with my natural brothers in her house

I lay in the wide bare embrace of heaven,

The sunlight’s radiant blessing clasped my brow,

The moonbeam’s silver ecstasy at night

Kissed my dim lids to sleep. Earth’s morns were mine…

Before fate led me into this emerald world…

As if to a deeper country of the soul

Transposing the vivid imagery of earth,

Through an inner seeing and sense a wakening came…

The neighing pride of rapid life that roams

Wind-maned through our pastures, on my seeing mood

Cast shapes of swiftness; trooping spotted deer

Against the vesper sky became a song

Of evening to the silence of my soul.

I caught for some eternal eye the sudden

Kingfisher flashing to a darkling pool;

A slow swan silvering the azure lake,

A shape of magic whiteness, sailed through dream;

Leaves trembling with the passion of the wind

Pranked butterflies, the conscious flowers of air,

And wandering wings from infinity

Lived on the tablets of my inner sight;

Mountains and trees stood there like thoughts from God.

Pranked butterflies, the conscious flowers of air,

The brilliant long bills in their vivid dress,

The peacock scattering on the breeze his moons

Painted my memory like a frescoed wall.

I carved my vision out of wood and stone;

I caught the echoes of a word supreme

And metred the rhythm-beats of infinity

And listened through music for the eternal Voice.

I felt a covert touch, I heard a call,

But could not clasp the body of my God

Or hold between my hands the World-Mother's feet…

I sat with the forest sages in their trance:

There poured awaking streams of diamond light,

I glimpsed the presence of the One in all.

But still there lacked the last transcendent power

And Matter still slept empty of its Lord.

The spirit was saved, the body lost and mute

Lived still with Death and ancient Ignorance;

The Inconscient was its base, the Void its fate.

But thou hast come and all will surely change:

I shall feel the World-Mother in thy golden limbs

And hear her wisdom in thy sacred voice.

The child of the Void shall be reborn in God.

My Matter shall evade the Inconscient's trance,

My body like my spirit shall be free:

It shall escape from Death and Ignorance.”

And Savitri musing still replied to him:

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

Speak of thyself and all thou art within;

I would know thee as if we had ever lived

Together in the chamber of our souls.

Speak till a light shall come into my heart

And my moved mortal mind shall understand

What all the deathless being in me feels.

It knows that thou art he my spirit has sought

Amidst earth's thronging visages and forms

Across the golden spaces of my life.”

And Satyavan like a replying harp

To the insistent calling of a flute

Answered her questioning and let stream to her

His heart in many-coloured waves of speech:

“O golden princess, perfect Savitri,

More I would tell than failing words can speak

Of all that thou hast meant to me, unknown,

All that the lightning flash of love reveals.

In one great hour of the unveiling gods

Even a brief nearness has reshaped my life.

For now I know that all I lived and was

Moved towards this moment of my heart's rebirth;

I look back on the meaning of myself,

A soul made ready on earth's soil for thee.

Once were my days like days of other men:

To think and act was all, to enjoy and breathe;

This was the width and height of mortal hope:

Yet there came glimpses of a deeper self

That lives behind life and makes her act its scene…

I groped for the Mystery with the lantern, Thought.

Its glimmerings lighted with the abstract word

A half-visible ground and travelling yard by yard

It mapped a system of the Self and God.

I could not live the truth it spoke and thought…

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

My other selves I lost and the body of God,

The link of the finite with the Infinite,

The bridge between the appearance and the Truth,

The mystic aim for which the world was made,

The human sense of Immortality.

But now the gold link comes to me with thy feet

And His gold sun has shone on me from thy face.

For now another realm draws near with thee

And now diviner voices fill my ear,

A strange new world swims to me in thy gaze

Approaching like a star from unknown heavens;

A cry of spheres comes with thee and a song

Of flaming gods. I draw a wealthier breath

And in a fierier march of moments move.

My mind transfigures to a rapturous seer.

A foam-leap travelling from the waves of bliss

Has changed my heart and changed the earth around:

All with thy coming fills. Air, soil and stream

Wear bridal raiment to be fit for thee

And sunlight grows a shadow of thy hue

Because of change within me by thy look.

Come nearer to me from thy car of light

On this green sward disdaining not our soil.

For here are secret spaces made for thee

Whose caves of emerald long to screen thy form.

Wilt thou not make this mortal bliss thy sphere?

Descend, O Happiness, with thy moon-gold feet,

Enrich earth's floors upon whose sleep we lie.

O my bright beauty's princess, Savitri,

By my delight and thy own joy compelled

Enter my life, thy chamber and thy shrine.

In the great quietness where spirits meet,

Led by my hushed desire into my woods

Let the dim rustling arches over thee lean;

One with the breath of things eternal live,

Thy heartbeats near to mine, till there shall leap

Enchanted from the fragrance of the flowers

A moment which all murmurs shall recall

And every bird remember in its cry.”

Savitri, pp. 403-09