Savitri

Canto One 

 

The Destined Meeting-Place 

 

But now the destined spot and hour were close;

Unknowing she had neared her nameless goal.

For though a dress of blind and devious chance

Is laid upon the work of all-wise Fate,

Our acts interpret an omniscient Force

That dwells in the compelling stuff of things,

And nothing happens in the cosmic play

But at its time and in its foreseen place.

To a space she came of soft and delicate air

That seemed a sanctuary of youth and joy,

A highland world of free and green delight

Where spring and summer lay together and strove

In indolent and amicable debate,

Inarmed, disputing with laughter who should rule.

There expectation beat wide sudden wings,

As if a soul had looked out from earth’s face

And all that was in her felt a coming change

And forgetting obvious joys and common dreams,

Obedient to Time’s call and the spirit’s fate,

Were lifted to a beauty calm and pure

That lived under the eyes of Eternity.

A crowd of mountainous heads assailed the sky

Pushing towards rival shoulders nearer heaven,

The armoured leaders of an iron line;

Earth prostrate lay beneath their feet of stone.

Below there crouched a dream of emerald woods

And gleaming borders solitary as sleep:

Pale waters ran like glimmering threads of pearl.

A sigh was straying among happy leaves;

Cool-perfumed with slow pleasure-burdened feet

Faint stumbling breezes faltered among flowers. 

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The white crane stood, a vivid motionless streak,

Peacock and parrot jewelled soil and tree,

The dove’s soft moan enriched the enamoured air

And fire-winged wild-drakes swam in silvery pools.

Earth couched alone with her great lover Heaven,

Uncovered to her consort’s purple eye.

In her luxurious ecstasy of joy

She squandered the love-music of her notes,

Wasted the passionate pattern of her blooms

And festival riot of her scents and hues.

A cry and leap and hurry ware around,

The stealthy footfalls of her chasing things,

The shaggy emerald of her centaur mane,

The gold and sapphire of her warmth and blaze.

Magician of her rapt felicities,

Blithe, sensuous-hearted, careless and divine,

Life ran or hid in her delightful rooms;

Behind all brooded Nature’s grandiose calm.

Primeval peace was there and in its bosom

Held undisturbed the strife of bird and beast.

Man, the deep-browed artificer, had not come

To lay his hand on happy inconscient things,

Thought was not there nor the measurer, strong-eyed toil,

Life had not learned its discord with its aim.

The mighty Mother lay outstretched at ease.

All was in line with her first satisfied plan;

Moved by a universal will of joy

The trees bloomed in their green felicity

And the wild children brooded not on pain.

At the end reclined a stern and giant tract

Of tangled depths and solemn questioning hills

And peaks like a bare austerity of the soul,

Armoured, remote and desolately grand

Like the thought-screened infinities that lie

Behind the rapt smile of the Almighty’s dance.

A matted forest-head invaded heaven 

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As if a blue-throated ascetic peered

From the stone fastness of his mountain cell

Regarding the brief gladness of the days;

His vast extended spirit couched behind.

A mighty murmur of immense retreat

Besieged the ear, a sad and limitless call

As of a soul retiring from the world.

This was the scene which the ambiguous Mother

Had chosen for her brief felicitous hour;

Here in this solitude far from the world

Her part she began in the world’s joy and strife.

Here were disclosed to her the mystic courts,

The lurking doors of beauty and surprise,

The wings that murmur in the golden house,

The temple of sweetness and the fiery aisle.

A stranger on the sorrowful roads of Time,

Immortal under the yoke of death and fate,

A sacrificant of the bliss and pain of the spheres,

Love in the wilderness met Savitri.

 

End of Canto One 

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