Savitri

  II

'Satyavan'

      As Savitri's "high carven car" winds its way through the wilderness on this day of predestination, she spies beyond the road deep recesses and groves and even catches the accents of speech:

      Sweet like desires enamoured and unseen,

      Cry answering to low insistent cry.¹⁸²

A "single path, shot thin and arrowlike" seems to lead into the half-hidden bowers of peace, and while following it, suddenly he appears,

      .. .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.¹⁸³

He is like "a wide daybreak of the gods", his body—albeit a youthful rishi's—is "a lover's and a king's". Destiny had sent him here to be the "foster-child of beauty and solitude", and he has grown in strength of limb and transparent lucidity of soul, mastering all knowledge and finding repose in the Spirit.

      This day of all days, Satyavan has—as if out to keep an appointment—strayed from his customary paths and gravitated towards the "forest's flowering verge", and there the vision of beauty,

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the divine shock of love, overwhelms him. At first Savitri from her car gazes vaguely about her, drinking in the loveliness of the place, and seeing him too, though not with particular intent; but presently her vision settles on him, the magic recognition takes place, and all is changed. Is he the genius of the spot? He looks "a king of life outlined in delicate air".¹⁸⁴ But the mere thinking faculty soon abdicates its function, waves of sudden ecstasy beat upon her, she is caught in a "mystic tumult from her depths", she is smitten by the arrows of pain and desire, the birth-pangs of a great new emotion throw her into convulsion, and at last she flings open the doors of her soul to this splendorous Sun. Their eyes meet, and the great alchemy works:

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.¹⁸⁵

The reins of the horses are drawn instantaneously back, the chariot stands "like an arrested wind"; and Satyavan, now alerted into attention,

...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.¹⁸⁶

Is this a new divinity undreamt of before? Satyavan misses his moorings and flounders "as in fire"; he is lost, another has seized him entire; even in the mere "sight's embrace", infinity merges with infinity. As dazed Satyavan dares Savitri's eyes:

He met in her regard his future's gaze,

A promise and a presence and a fire,

Saw an embodiment of aeonic dreams,...¹⁸⁷

No chance or new meeting is this, though it seems such to be; nor aliens nor strangers are they, but soulmates since the beginning of

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things, and now awakening into a new recognition of each other by the roseate dawn of love.

      Love is a spiraling phenomenon, its base is on earth and earthy, its crown is in the highest heavens; its power has a uniform potency, though the effects may differ at different points of the spiral. At the lower reaches, there are not wanting debasing and corrupting influences that cheapen and poison love. But in its essential movement and in its proper field, "Love is a glory from eternity's sphere". None is really dead to love, but each waits "like an unopened flower" for the destined moment of unfolding. Love is the "child-god" who variously accomplishes the blaze of transfigurement in which man and woman run into mutual recognition, and each exclaims:

      Behold the one

      For whom my life has waited long unfilled,

      Behold the sudden sovereign of my days.¹⁸⁸

There is marvellous communion between heart and heart, limb and limb, and all the world seems to be charged with the beauty of heaven. Such a moment has come to Satyavan and Savitri:

      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.¹⁸⁹

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