Savitri Responds, p. 409

Opening Remarks
Savitri hears Satyavan’s invitation and the hint of love. She too has felt moved by love in her bosom. So now she responds, more through gestures sweet than through words.

Liquid sounds
Allured to her lashes by his passionate words
Her fathomless soul looked out at him from her eyes;
Passing her lips in liquid sounds it spoke.

Hearing Satyavan’s voice Savitri’s soul peeped through her eyes and turning her lips into melting notes she spoke.

Thou art he
This word alone she uttered and said all:
“O Satyavan, I have heard thee and I know;
I know that thou and only thou art he.”

She said all in this one utterance that “O Satyavan I have heard you and I know that you alone are he.” She recognizes that it is for him that her heart has come so far.

Down she came
Then down she came from her high carven car
Descending with a soft and faltering haste;
Her many-hued raiment glistening in the light
Hovered a moment over the wind-stirred grass,
Mixed with a glimmer of her body’s ray
Like lovely plumage of a settling bird.

Then Savitri came down from her carven car descending with a soft and faltering haste signifying dignity as well as the hurry to meet him. Her royal dress glistened in the morning light hovering for a moment on the grass mixing with her body’s radiant beauty creating the impression of a lovely plumage of a bird as she settles down.

Gleaming feet
Her gleaming feet upon the green-gold sward
Scattered a memory of wandering beams
And lightly pressed the unspoken desire of earth
Cherished in her too brief passing by the soil.

With superb poetic charm and majesty Sri Aurobindo describes as she presses her feet upon the grass scattering the wandering beams and awakening the earth’s desire to hold her feet even for a passing moment.

Jewel-faces
Then flitting like pale-brilliant moths her hands
Took from the sylvan verge’s sunlit arms
A load of their jewel-faces’ clustering swarms,
Companions of the spring-time and the breeze.

She plucked few flowers from the forest verge that were blooming in the spring.

Flower song
A candid garland set with simple forms
Her rapid fingers taught a flower song,
The stanzaed movement of a marriage hymn.

She rapidly weaved a flower garland as if the rhythm of a song, a marriage hymn were being prepared through the flowers.

Profound in perfume
Profound in perfume and immersed in hue
They mixed their yearning’s coloured signs and made
The bloom of their purity and passion one.

Profound perfumes immersed in hue the flowers mixed their yearning as a sign of making their purity and passion one.

Sacrament of joy
A sacrament of joy in treasuring palms
She brought, flower-symbol of her offered life,
Then with raised hands that trembled a little now
At the very closeness that her soul desired,
This bond of sweetness, their bright union’s sign,
She laid on the bosom coveted by her love.

Filled with joy her palms held the flowers as a symbol of her offered life. Then with a bit of tremble at the very closeness of her heart’s desire, and as a bond of sweetness she laid the flower garland on Satyavan’s bosom coveted by her love.

Closing Remarks
Using significant flower symbols, Sri Aurobindo reveals the inner state of Savitri manifested through the gathering of flowers, weaving them in a garland and then offering it to adore the bosom of Satyavan.