66: Deeply she listened...

A Spiritual Biography of Savitri

 

Beside her Satyavan walked full of joy,

Because she moved with him through his green haunts:

He showed her all the forest's riches, flowers

Innumerable of every odour and hue

And soft thick clinging creepers red and green

And strange rich-plumaged birds, to every cry

That haunted sweetly distant boughs, replied

With the shrill singer's name more sweetly called.

 

He spoke of all the things he loved: they were

His boyhood's comrades and his playfellows,

Coevals and companions of his life

Here in this world whose every mood he knew:

Their thoughts which to the common mind are blank

He shared, to every wild emotion felt

An answer.

 

Deeply she listened, but to hear

The voice that soon would cease from tender words

And treasure its sweet cadences beloved

For lonely memory when none by her walked

And the beloved voice could speak no more.

 

But little dwelt her mind upon their sense;

Of death, not life she thought or life's lone end.

 

Love in her bosom hurt with jagged edges

Of anguish moaned at every step with pain

Crying, “Now, now perhaps his voice will cease

For ever.”

 

Even by some vague touch oppressed,

Sometimes her eyes looked round as if their orbs

Might see the dim and dreadful god's approach.

 

But Satyavan had paused. He meant to finish

His labour here that happy, linked, uncaring

They two might wander free in the green deep

Primeval mystery of the forest's heart.

*

Wordless but near she watched, no turn to lose

Of the bright face and body which she loved.

 

Her life was now in seconds, not in hours,

And every moment she economised

Like a pale merchant leaned above his store,

The miser of his poor remaining gold.

 

But Satyavan wielded a joyous axe.

 

He sang high snatches of a sage's chant

That pealed of conquered death and demons slain,

And sometimes paused to cry to her sweet speech

Of love and mockery tenderer than love:

She like a pantheress leaped upon his words

And carried them into her cavern heart.

 

Savitri, pp. 562-63
 

*The following lines, not present in the Centenary and earlier editions of Savitri, have been restored here in the Revised Edition.

 

A tree that raised its tranquil head to heaven

Luxuriating in verdure, summoning

The breeze with amorous wideness of its boughs,

He chose and with his steel assailed the arm

Brown, rough and strong hidden in its emerald dress.