Narad Begins His Reply, pp. 442-443

Opening remarks
Narad starts his reply using his speech as a channel and instrument to convey profound truths to mortal men.

Fragile hints of mortal speech
Then after a silence Narad made reply:
Tuning his lips to earthly sound he spoke,
And something now of the deep sense of fate
Weighted the fragile hints of mortal speech.

Narad remained silent for a while and then tuning his lips to human speech and earthly sounds he started replying the deep mysteries of fate weighing his human words that are at best fragile hints.

Inscriptions of the gods
His forehead shone with vision solemnised,
Turned to a tablet of supernal thoughts
As if characters of an unwritten tongue
Had left in its breadth the inscriptions of the gods.

Narad has the capacity to inwardly see the truth through revelation and vision. His thought is a vehicle to give words to the unwritten inscriptions of the gods.

World-wide look
Bare in that light Time toiled, his unseen works
Detected; the broad-flung far-seeing schemes
Unfinished which his aeoned flight unrolls
Were mapped already in that world-wide look.

In the light of an inner seeing, he could see the secret sense of the toil of Time and its far flung schemes. The future and the past were scanned by his world-wide look that covered all the triple time in a single glance.

Was then the sun a dream
“Was then the sun a dream because there is night?

He raises a question for the queen to reflect if the sun and all the beautiful and luminous aspects of life can be called a dream just because there is night?

He Eternal lives
Hidden in the mortal’s heart the Eternal lives:
He lives secret in the chamber of thy soul,
A Light shines there nor pain nor grief can cross.

He reveals at the very beginning that the Eternal dwells in the mortal’s heart in the secret chamber of his soul. There shines a Light that neither pain nor grief can cross.

A darkness stands between
A darkness stands between thyself and him,
Thou canst not hear or feel the marvellous Guest,
Thou canst not see the beatific sun.

A darkness stands between us and the Lord hence we cannot hear or feel the marvellous Guest within nor see the beatific Light that He is.

Brilliant curtain
O queen, thy thought is a light of the Ignorance,
Its brilliant curtain hides from thee God’s face.

He reveals to the queen that her thoughts are born out of ignorance and act like a brilliant curtain that hide God’s face.

Hides the Immortal’s meaning
It illumes a world born from the Inconscience
But hides the Immortal’s meaning in the world.

The thoughts born of ignorance show us the surfaces of the world as it emerges out of the dark Inconscient but hides the purpose and meaning of creation.

Earth’s joys shut the Immortal’s bliss
Thy mind’s light hides from thee the Eternal’s thought,
Thy heart’s hopes hide from thee the Eternal’s will,
Earth’s joys shut from thee the Immortal’s bliss.

Our mind’s light hides from us the Eternal’s Wisdom. Our heart’s hopes hide from us the Eternal’s will. Earth’s joys shut from us the Immortal’s bliss.

Dread teacher
Thence rose the need of a dark intruding god,
The world’s dread teacher, the creator, pain.

Hence there arose the need of a dark god intruding in the blissful fields of God as the world’s dread teacher who creates with pain.

Closing Remarks
Narad starts revealing the secret of pain after reminding us that there is within us the possibility of being free from it. Yet our ignorance keeps us tied to the possibility of pain.