Opening Remarks
Death falsifies everything and corrupts all things with his breath. Even love is not spared.
Emotion’s hues
This angel in thy body thou callst love,
Who shapes his wings from thy emotion’s hues,
In a ferment of thy body has been born
And with the body that housed it it must die.
Death says that love is born in the body as a ferment out of emotions and dies with it.
Human prop
It is a passion of thy yearning cells,
It is flesh that calls to flesh to serve its lust;
It is thy mind that seeks an answering mind
And dreams awhile that it has found its mate;
It is thy life that asks a human prop
To uphold its weakness lonely in the world
Or feeds its hunger on another’s life.
Love, according to Death is simply a passion emerging out of cellular activity that gives rise to passion that attracts another body to satisfy its longing and lust. It is her mind that seeks an answering mind and dreams awhile that it has found its mate. It is her life that seeks a human prop to cure her of weakness and loneliness. Love simply is a hunger that feeds on another’s life.
A beast of prey
A beast of prey that pauses in its prowl,
It crouches under a bush in splendid flower
To seize a heart and body for its food:
This beast thou dreamst immortal and a god.
Death describes love as a beast that pauses in its prowl to prey by couching under a bush in splendid flower to suddenly spring upon and seize upon a heart and body for its food. It is this beast to which one gives the name of love and dreams it to be immortal and a god.
An hour’s delight
O human mind, vainly thou torturest
An hour’s delight to stretch through infinity’s
Long void and fill its formless, passionless gulfs,
Persuading the insensible Abyss
To lend eternity to perishing things,
And trickst the fragile movements of thy heart
With thy spirit’s feint of immortality.
Death advices Savitri not to vainly torture her mind for an hour’s delight hoping it to stretch through infinity’s long void and fill its formless, passionless Abyss. It is futile to persuade the insensible Abyss to feel joy and to lend eternity to transient perishing things. It is simply a trick of the mind that feigns that the fragile movements of the heart can share the spirit’s immortality.
Closing Remarks
Death is blinded by its own darkness and, like the materialists believes that love is simply a byproduct of the body’s chemistry, a legacy from the animal which the mind colours with its fantasy and wishes and gives beautiful names.
About Savitri | B1C3-11 Towards Unity with God (pp.31-33)