Book-5-Study-Canto-2

Canto Two

Satyavan

Summary
This day the road turns towards some human homes.

A single path shoots forth in the wide green forest. Here Savitri first meets him for whom she has come so far. He appears against a forest edge, erect and lofty like a spear of God. Noble, peaceful, beautiful, joyous is his figure.

The wisdom of a hostile Fate had brought him here to the very abode of Mother-Nature where he has grown in wisdom, identified with the workings of Nature.

This morning impelled by the Guide within he has turned from his accustomed paths to this spot.

At first his figure appears to Savitri’s eyes as part of the general forest-scene. Then suddenly something wells up from within and her vision settles. Her heart looks out at him and knows him closer than its own strings. She is surprised and seized. All in her being rushes towards him. She comes under the spell of the face she sees. She cries out. The chariot comes to a stop.

Satyavan looks up and hears her enchanting voice, beholds her perfect face. His being is overwhelmed. His gaze meets her gaze and the eyes cling. He becomes conscious of his future regarding him in her person. He sees his dream coming to life.

Verily in these two, Love has brought down power from eternity to firmly establish himself in life on earth.

Men seem to meet each other as if by accident. But in fact it is all by some secret design of Providence. The soul recognises its mate-soul and with the first breath of love responds to it in joy.

Love is a power and a glory from eternity. He is disfigured and misused here in the lower creation. Yet he is the one God who can change all. Love dwells in all like an unopened flower and blooms at the right soul-moment. Till he gets a signal by a look, a touch, or a face, he plays about in thought, in imagination, in dream.

Love strives to realise the underlying unity in all. Indeed the cup that can hold the rare nectar-wine of love is unique, but there do come by such receptacles of the power and bliss of love.

Both Savitri and Satyavan recognise each other. All their past rushes up in memory. Forms have changed, but not the Spirit of either. The distance between them crumbles and heart turns to heart in close affinity.

A new time begins in that long moment.

Day of Fate

All she remembered on this day of Fate,
The road that hazarded not the solemn depths
But turned away to flee to human homes,
The wilderness with its mighty monotone,
The morning like a lustrous seer above,
The passion of the summits lost in heaven,
The titan murmur of the endless woods.

On this significant day Savitri’s mind remembers the road turning away from the depths of the woods towards human habitation. She remembers also the great unchanging note of the wilderness around, the bright morning above, the soaring of the mountain summits into the skies and the giant murmurs of the luxuriant forests everywhere.

Wicket Gate to Joy

As if a wicket gate to joy were there
Ringed in with voiceless hint and magic sign,
Upon the margin of an unknown world
Reclined the curve of a sun-held recess;

Like an entrance to a place of joy, conveying a mute hint, a magic sign, there comes into view a sunbathed retreat on the border of an unknown realm.

Shelters of Felicity

Groves with strange flowers like eyes of gazing nymphs
Peered from their secrecy into open space,
Boughs whispering to a constancy of light
Sheltered a dim and screened felicity,
And slowly a supine inconstant breeze
Ran like a fleeting sigh of happiness
Over slumberous grasses pranked with green and gold.

Groves with bright flowers and sun-lit boughs horning soft felicity come into view. A mild breeze, like a quick sigh of happiness, passes over the grass-spreads spangled with growths in green and gold.

Voices of Birds

Hidden in the forest’s bosom of loneliness
Amid the leaves the inmate voices called,
Sweet like desires enamoured and unseen,
Cry answering to low insistent cry.

From the branches of the trees in the forest are heard, like charming and unseen desires, sweet voices of birds calling and answering.

Strength and Peace

Behind slept emerald dumb remotenesses,
Haunt of a Nature passionate, veiled, denied
To all but her own vision lost and wild.

Earth in this beautiful refuge free from cares
Murmured to the soul a song of strength and peace.

Behind extends a thick forest range, remote from approach, where wild Nature thrives in utter privacy.

In this fine retreat free from all cares, the Earth exudes strength and peace.

Here she Meets him

Only one sign was there of a human tread:
A single path, shot thin and arrowlike
Into this bosom of vast and secret life,
Pierced its enormous dream of solitude.

Here first she met on the uncertain earth
The one for whom her heart had come so far.

There is here only one sign of human habitation. A single path, narrow and straight, breaks through this vast belt of solitude.

Here Savitri meets, for the first time on this unsure earth, him for whom she has journeyed so far.

He Appears Like a Spear of God

As might a soul on Nature’s background limned
Stand out for a moment in a house of dream
Created by the ardent breath of life,
So he appeared against the forest verge
Inset twixt green relief and golden ray.

As if a weapon of the living Light,
Erect and lofty like a spear of God
His figure led the splendour of the morn.

Like a being appearing for an instant, against a backdrop of Nature, in a vivid dream, he comes into view against the forest background, his figure framed by the green vegetation and the golden light of the sun. Piercing like a shaft of bright Light, erect like a spear of God, his form heralds the splendour of that morn.

All Beauty and Light

Noble and clear as the broad peaceful heavens
A tablet of young wisdom was his brow,
Freedom’s imperious beauty curved his limbs,
The joy of life was on his open face.

His look was a wide daybreak of the gods,
His head was a youthful Rishi’s touched with light,
His body was a lover’s and a king’s.

His brow is noble, clear, radiating peace and wisdom; his limbs are moulded in the compelling beauty of a large freedom; his open face expresses the joy of life. His eyes have the wide look of young gods. His head is that of a young Rishi, touched with spiritual light; his body is as attractive as that of a lover, as majestic as that of a king.

He Illumines

In the magnificent dawning of his force
Built like a moving statue of delight
He illumined the border of the forest page.

Out of the ignorant eager toil of the years
Abandoning man’s loud drama he had come
Led by the wisdom of an adverse Fate
To meet the ancient Mother in her groves.

Magnificent in his young strength and looking like a living statue of delight, Satyavan lights up the verge of the forest where he is standing.

Guided by the wisdom of a Fate apparently adverse to him, he has come here to the ancient Mother-Nature, leaving behind him the ignorant, restless and noisy life of human beings.

In driving him into exile from his royal kingdom, Fate has seemed to be hostile; but that is so only in appearance. Behind this circumstance there has been a wisdom working towards a great fulfilment.

Child of Beauty and Solitude

In her divine communion he had grown
A foster-child of beauty and solitude,
Heir to the centuries of the lonely wise,
A brother of the sunshine and the sky,
A wanderer communing with depth and marge.

In the close company of Mother-Nature, he has fully imbibed the beauty and solitude of the place; he has become heir to the ages—old heritage of the seer-hermits living here; a natural companion to the sun and the sky, he roams freely all over his forest realm.

Veda-Knower of Nature

A Veda-knower of the unwritten book
Perusing the mystic scripture of her forms
He had caught her hierophant significances,
Her sphered immense imaginations learned,
Taught by sublimities of stream and wood
And voices of the sun and star and flame
And chant of the magic singers on the boughs
And the dumb teaching of four-footed things.

He has grown in the living knowledge directly derived from Nature. He has imbibed the significance of her forms, known her vast moods, learnt from the sublimities of flowing streams and extensive forests and from the voices of the sun, star and flame, heard the enchanting notes of the birds on the trees and grasped the mute teaching of the animals around him.

Leaned to her Influence

Helping with confident steps her slow great hands
He leaned to her influence like a flower to rain
And, like the flower and tree a natural growth,
Widened with the touches of her shaping hours.

Collaborating with Nature in her large movements, he has been instinctively open to her influence and moulded by her touch.

One with the Single Spirit

The mastery free natures have was his
And their assent to joy and spacious calm;
One with the single Spirit inhabiting all,
He laid experience at the Godhead’s feet;
His mind was open to her infinite mind,
His acts were rhythmic with her primal force;
He had subdued his mortal thought to hers.

He has the command of free natures as well as the joy and the wide calm. Becoming one with the indwelling Spirit of all, he offers all experience at the altar of the Godhead in Nature. He keeps his mind receptive to her infinite mind, acts in tune with her original force, thinks in conformity with her thought.

On the Forest’s Verge

That day he had turned from his accustomed paths;
For One who, knowing every moment’s load,
Can move in all our studied or careless steps,
Had laid the spell of destiny on his feet
And drawn him to the forest’s flowering verge.

This morning Satyavan has taken a path different from his usual routes. For Providence who knows what is preparing at every moment of time and guides our steps—whether they are conscious and careful or otherwise—, has led him to his destiny and brought him to the blossoming border of the forest.

Her Impersonal Glance (I)

At first her glance that took life’s million shapes
Impartially to people its treasure-house
Along with sky and flower and hill and star,
Dwelt rather on the bright harmonious scene.

It saw the green gold of the slumbrous sward,
The grasses quivering with the slow wind’s tread,
The branches haunted by the wild bird’s call.

Savitri does not see him at first. Her sight accustomed to take in the innumerable forms in life without preference along with those in Nature, is absorbed in the harmonious scene around her. It contemplates the green and gold hues of the turf, the grasses swaying in the slow breeze, the branches of trees echoing with the call of the wild birds.

Her Impersonal Glance (II)

Awake to Nature, vague as yet to life,
The eager prisoner from the Infinite,
The immortal wrestler in its mortal house,
Its pride, power, passion of a striving God,
It saw this image of veiled deity,
This thinking master creature of the earth,
This last result of the beauty of the stars,
But only saw like fair and common forms
The artist spirit needs not for its work
And puts aside in memory’s shadowy rooms.

Savitri is more sensitive to Nature than to human life. She, who has come from the Infinite, accepts willingly her imprisonment which is impressed in Matter; she is the immortal combatant in mortal tenement, with the intensities of a struggling God. Her eyes light upon the form of Satyavan—the image of the deity veiled within, the crowning product of earth, the culmination of the beauty of the stars;—but they look at him as at other common forms very much like an artist looking at things not relevant to his immediate purpose and putting them aside in the store of his memory for future use.

Her Eyes Wander

A look, a turn decides our ill-poised fate.

Thus in the hour that most concerned her all,
Wandering unwarned by the slow surface mind,
The heedless scout beneath her tenting lids
Admired indifferent beauty and cared not
To wake her body’s spirit to its king.

Very often a sudden look, an unexpected turn settles our fate that has not been decided till that moment. This is what happens in the case of Savitri now.

At this moment that concerns her most, her eyes wander, without any alert from the slow-moving surface mind; they admire the beauty of Satyavan in an impersonal way without caring to intimate to the spirit of her body that its king is here.

God Touches in Time

So might she have passed by on chance ignorant roads
Missing the call of Heaven, losing life’s aim,
But the god touched in time her conscious soul.

Her vision settled, caught and all was changed.

She would have passed on thus wherever chance led her on roads meaningless to her purpose, missing her call of destiny. But the daemon prompts her conscious being in time and as a result her gaze fixes itself on Satyavan and all is changed.

In Ideal Dreams

Her mind at first dwelt in ideal dreams,
Those intimate transmuters of earth’s signs
That make known things a hint of unseen spheres,
And saw in him the genius of the spot,
A symbol figure standing mid earth’s scenes,
A king of life outlined in delicate air.

At first Savitri’s mind is full of ideal dreams which make the known things of the earth springboards for entry into unseen worlds; she sees Satyavan as the presiding spirit of the place, in a symbolic way, a king of life created out of fine air.

Her Heart Looks

Yet this was but a moment’s reverie;
For suddenly her heart looked out at him,
The passionate seeing used thought cannot match,
And knew one nearer than its own close strings.

However, this reverie lasts hardly for a moment. All of a sudden her heart looks out at Satyavan, looks with the passion which sees what thought cannot see, and recognises him to be someone closer to itself than its own strings.

Born to new Things

All in a moment was surprised and seized,
All in inconscient ecstasy lain wrapped
Or under imagination’s coloured lids
Held up in a large mirror-air of dream,
Broke forth in flame to recreate the world,
And in that flame to new things she was born.

In a moment all in her is taken by surprise and seized; all that had lain covered in mute ecstasy, all that was in the states of imagination and dream, sprang into a flaming reality to create a new world; and in that intensity Savitri is born to a new life.

Her Soul Flings open its Doors

A mystic tumult from her depths arose;
Hailed, smitten erect like one who dreamed at ease,
Life ran to gaze from every gate of sense:
Thoughts indistinct and glad in moon-mist heavens,
Feelings as when a universe takes birth,
Swept through the turmoil of her bosom’s space
Invaded by a swarm of golden gods:
Arising to a hymn of wonder’s priests
Her soul flung wide its doors to this new sun.

From her depths rises a strange stir. As if smitten awake from sleep, her life rushes out into all her senses. Vaguely happy and heavenly thoughts and strong and vivid feelings sweep through her agitated bosom in which a host of golden gods have rushed. In response to a call of wonder, her soul opens wide its doors to this new sun on the horizon—Satyavan.

Transmutation Comes

An alchemy worked, the transmutation came;
The missioned face had wrought the Master’s spell.

In the nameless light of two approaching eyes
A swift and fated turning of her days
Appeared and stretched to the gleam of unknown worlds.

A transforming change comes over her. Satyavan’s face, charged with destiny, casts a masterful spell over her. As his luminous eyes turn to regard her, a rapid and fated turning in her life takes place and an unknown future stretches before her.

Her Heart Cries Out

Then trembling with the mystic shock her heart
Moved in her breast and cried out like a bird
Who hears his mate upon a neighbouring bough.

Hooves trampling fast, wheels largely stumbling ceased;
The chariot stood like an arrested wind.

Quivering with this supernatural shock, her heart wakes up and cries out as a bird does when she hears her companion upon a neighbouring branch.The speeding chariot comes to a stop.

Satyavan Looks Out

And Satyavan looked out from his soul’s doors
And felt the enchantment of her liquid voice
Fill his youth’s purple ambiance and endured
The haunting miracle of a perfect face.

Satyavan looks at her with eyes that reveal his soul and feels the magic charm of her melting voice fill his vibrant being. He comes under the spell of her miraculously perfect face. Such perfection of form is, indeed, a miracle.

He Turns Like Sea to Moon

Mastered by the honey of a strange flower-mouth,
Drawn to soul-spaces opening round a brow,
He turned to the vision like a sea to the moon
And suffered a dream of beauty and of change,
Discovered the aureole round a mortal’s head,
Adored a new divinity in things.

Satyavan is unable to resist the sweetness flowing from her lips, like honey from a flower; he is attracted to her noble brow centring the spaces of her soul; like a sea heaving to the moon, he turns to her and falls, as in a dream, under the spell of beauty and change; he realises that she is going to change his life entirely. He perceives an aura of light around her head and comes to regard and adore a new divinity on earth.

His Nature Founders

His self-bound nature foundered as in fire;
His life was taken into another’s life.

The splendid lonely idols of his brain
Fell prostrate from their bright sufficiencies,
As at the touch of a new infinite,
To worship a godhead greater than their own.

His nature always self-based is changed and loses itself as if in fire; his life is engulfed by another life. All the isolated self-sufficient constructions of his mind crumble down like so many idols falling at the fresh breath of the infinite in order to worship a godhead greater than themselves.

Gaze Meets Gaze

An unknown imperious force drew him to her.

Marvelling he came across the golden sward:
Gaze met close gaze and clung in sight’s embrace.

An unknown irresistible force draws him to Savitri. Filled with wonder he advances across the shining turf. His gaze meets her gaze and their eyes cling to each other.

Known through many Lives

A visage was there, noble and great and calm,
As if encircled by a halo of thought,
A span, an arch of meditating light,
As though some secret nimbus half was seen;
Her inner vision still remembering knew
A forehead that wore the crown of all her past,
Two eyes her constant and eternal stars,
Comrade and sovereign eyes that claimed her soul,
Lids known through many lives, large frames of love.

His face, noble and calm, appears as if in a halo of mystic light. Her inner eye remembers and recognises the same forehead that wore the glory of her long past, the same two eyes that were her constant stars, friendly and masterful eyes that had always claimed her soul, the same familiar lids that were wide frames of love.

His very Own

He met in her regard his future’s gaze,
A promise and a presence and a fire,
Saw an embodiment of aeonic dreams,
A mystery of the rapture for which all
Yearns in this world of brief mortality
Made in material shape his very own.

Satyavan feels as if his own future is looking at him through her gaze, he becomes aware of its presence, its promise and its flame. In her he sees a physical embodiment of ageless dreams, a supernal concentration of the rapture, for which everything in this fleeting world yearns, presented to him in a concrete form.

Key of all his Aims

This golden figure given to his grasp
Hid in its breast the key of all his aims,
A spell to bring the Immortal’s bliss on earth,
To mate with heaven’s truth our mortal thought,
To lift earth-hearts nearer the Eternal’s sun.

In Savitri, this golden figure offered to Satyavan to hold dear, lies concealed the key to the fulfilment of all the aims he has cherished. She holds the magic word to usher in the Bliss of the Immortal on earth, to join human thought to the truth of heaven, to uplift the beings of earth closer to the Light of the Eternal.

New Power of Love

In these great spirits now incarnate here
Love brought down power out of eternity
To make of life his new undying base.

His passion surged a wave from fathomless deeps;
It leapt to earth from far forgotten heights,
But kept its nature of infinity.

In these two great spirits incarnated in their human forms as Satyavan and Savitri, Love has brought down from Eternity a Power that can convert life on earth into a new immortal base for himself—one base is already there in the celestial regions above. The passion of this Love is a wave surging from the profounds of the Infinite leaping down to the earth from far off heights but keeping its nature of infinity.

Our Lives are not Aliens

On the dumb bosom of this oblivious globe
Although as unknown beings we seem to meet,
Our lives are not aliens nor as strangers join,
Moved to each other by a causeless force.

Though on this mute and self-forgetful earth we appear to meet as if unknown to each other, in fact it is not so. We are not foreign to each other; we are not strangers who are brought together by some mechanical, fortuitous force.

Soul Recognises Soul

The soul can recognise its answering soul
Across dividing Time and, on Life’s roads
Absorbed wrapped traveller, turning it recovers
Familiar splendours in an unknown face
And touched by the warning finger of swift love
It thrills again to an immortal joy
Wearing a mortal body for delight.

This strangeness is only on the surface. Within, the soul recognises its companion soul, in spite of the lapse of time while journeying on the road of Life, self-absorbed. It finds again in the unknown face before it the splendours known to it before and when a sudden movement of love touches it as if to draw attention to an already existing relation, it responds again to an eternal joy, taking a human form to enjoy the bliss of union.

Greater than Thoughts

There is a Power within that knows beyond
Our knowings; we are greater than our thoughts,
And sometimes earth unveils that vision here.

In us there is a Power that knows what our minds do not know. Our thinking mind is not our highest faculty; our being is greater. At times this vision, that is beheld beyond the range of thought, is unveiled on earth.

Love (I)

To live, to love are signs of infinite things,
Love is a glory from eternity’s spheres.

Abased, disfigured, mocked by baser mights
That steal his name and shape and ecstasy,
He is still the Godhead by which all can change.

To live fully, to love truly, are signs of the verities of the Infinite. Love is not a product of earthly growths but a splendour from the realms of the Eternal. Here on earth, Love is parodied, disfigured and misused by lesser formations that pass under his name. Still, in spite of this travesty, Love is the Power that can change all in this Creation.

Love (II)

A mystery wakes in our inconscient stuff,
A bliss is born that can remake our life.

Love dwells in us like an unopened flower
Awaiting a rapid moment of the soul,
Or he roams in his charmed sleep mid thoughts and things;

Love is a mystery that wakes up from an inconscient region. When he awakes, a bliss is born that can change and new-make our life.

Love dwells in us like a flower that is closed, he awaits the right soul-movement in order to open out. It is only when the soul is ripe that true love blossoms. If not, he wanders, in his unconscious spell, from thought to thought, from object to object.

Love (III)

The child-god is at play, he seeks himself
In many hearts and minds and living forms:
He lingers for a sign that he can know
And, when it comes, wakes blindly to a voice,
A look, a touch, the meaning of a face.

In his infancy—when he is not yet fully conscious—love plays around, trying to find himself in various hearts, minds and forms. He looks for a definite signal and when that comes, he responds blindly—without scrutiny—to a Voice that calls, to a look that beckons, to a touch or a face that appears.

Love (IV)

His instrument the dim corporeal mind,
Of celestial insight now forgetful grown,
He seizes on some sign of outward charm
To guide him mid the throng of Nature’s hints,
Reads heavenly truths into earth’s semblances,
Desires the image for the Godhead’s sake,
Divines the immortalities of form
And takes the body for the sculptured soul.

The obscure physical mind which has forgotten its direct insight is his instrument. So from among the multitude of hints from Nature, he responds to some exterior charm; he imagines the verities of heaven in the imitations on earth; he desires the simulacrum in place of the actual Godhead; he ascribes immortality to forms—which however are transitory; he mistakes the body for the soul.

Love (V)

Love’s adoration like a mystic seer
Through vision looks at the invisible,
In earth’s alphabet finds a God-like sense;
But the mind only thinks, “Behold the one
For whom my life has waited long unfilled,
Behold the sudden sovereign of my days.”

The adoration of Love regards the unseen through the seen; it finds a heavenly meaning in the script of the earth. But the mind is tied to physical appearances and thinks: "Here is one for whom I have waited all along; here is the sovereign of my life."

Love (VI)

Heart feels for heart, limb cries for answering limb;
All strives to enforce the unity all is.

Too far from the Divine, Love seeks his truth
And life is blind and the instruments deceive
And Powers are there that labour to debase.

All is in fact one. Everything strives to realise and live this Unity; heart feels for heart, limb calls for answering limb.

Love seeks his truth of Oneness too far away from the Divine—the Source of Oneness; love is blind, his instruments cheat and there are Powers in the universe—especially in the vital region—that lower and deform his workings.

Rare Cup

Still can the vision come, the joy arrive.

Rare is the cup fit for love’s nectar wine,
As rare the vessel that can hold God’s birth;
A soul made ready through a thousand years
Is the living mould of a supreme Descent.

And yet, in spite of all obstructions and debasements, the vision of Oneness can actualise itself, the joy of it can manifest.

But the fit receptacle for the immortal wine of Love is rare, as rare as an adequate embodiment for the manifesting Divine—it is only a soul that has been prepared over centuries of time that can form the living mould for a supreme Descent, an Avatar.

They Know each other

These knew each other though in forms thus strange.

Although to sight unknown, although life, mind
Had altered to hold a new significance,
These bodies summed the drift of numberless births
And the spirit to the spirit was the same.

Savitri and Satyavan recognise each other though they now meet in quite different forms. Though their physical eyes have not met before, though their life and mind have changed and acquired a new meaning, their bodies epitomise the course taken across innumerable births and the spirit in one knows it is the same as the spirit in the other.

The Lovers Meet

Amazed by a joy for which they had waited long,
The lovers met upon their different paths,
Travellers across the limitless plains of Time
Together drawn from fate-led journeyings
In the self-closed solitude of their human past,
To a swift rapturous dream of future joy
And the unexpected present of these eyes.

Both the lovers, overcome by a joy long awaited for by them, now meet while on their different paths. Voyagers in the vast of Time, they are now drawn together from their destined individual courses in their human past to a sudden blissful dream of future joy and a wholly unexpected present before their eyes.

Spirit’s Memory Awakes

By the revealing greatness of a look,
Form-smitten the spirit’s memory woke in sense.

The mist was torn that lay between two lives;
Her heart unveiled and his to find her turned;

By the rich revelation of a look, the spirit’s dormant memory is smitten by the form and awakes in the sense; recognition dawns. As a consequence the mist that lay between the two is torn. Her heart opens out and his heart turns to find her.

Matrix of New Time

Attracted as in heaven star by star,
They wondered at each other and rejoiced
And wove affinity in a silent gaze.

A moment passed that was eternity’s ray,
An hour began, the matrix of new Time.

As a star attracts another star in the heavens, so Savitri and Satyavan look at each other in wonder and rejoice. Their silent gaze weaves an affinity between them.

It is a moment but it has the touch of eternity; time stands still.

A fresh hour begins, the womb of a new Age.