Opening Remarks
Thus Savitri journeyed through cities and hamlets, mountains and plains through days and nights, witnessing the change of places and seasons in the course of her travel.
Great solitary tract
Thence to great solitary tracts she came,
Where man was a passer-by towards human scenes
Or sole in Nature’s vastness strove to live
And called for help to ensouled invisible Powers,
Overwhelmed by the immensity of his world
And unaware of his own infinity.
Thence she came to great solitary tracts where man was but a passer-by who lived in the vast immensity of Nature invoking invisible Powers, the gods while forgetting that he himself is a god, who can become one with the Infinite.
Far and nameless voice
The earth multiplied to her a changing brow
And called her with a far and nameless voice.
The earth scenes changed as she moved as if called by a far and distant voice.
Divinity’s doors
The mountains in their anchorite solitude,
The forests with their multitudinous chant
Disclosed to her the masked divinity’s doors.
The mountains stood there in their anchorite like solitude and the forests chanted as the winds passed through them opening for her hidden doors to divinity.
Mountain summits
On dreaming plains, an indolent expanse,
The death-bed of a pale enchanted eve
Under the glamour of a sunken sky,
Impassive she lay as at an age’s end,
Or crossed an eager pack of huddled hills
Lifting their heads to hunt a lairlike sky,
Or travelled in a strange and empty land
Where desolate summits camped in a weird heaven,
Mute sentinels beneath a drifting moon,
Or wandered in some lone tremendous wood
Ringing for ever with the crickets’ cry
Or followed a long glistening serpent road
Through fields and pastures lapped in moveless light
Or reached the wild beauty of a desert space
Where never plough was driven nor herd had grazed
And slumbered upon stripped and thirsty sands
Amid the savage wild-beast night’s appeal.
We have a beautiful description of the beautiful sunsets and dream-like spaces in which she rested as if an Age had ended. She travelled through hills rising towards the sky or desolate mountain summits that encroached upon heavens as mute sentinels beneath a drifting moon. Or she followed some long serpentine road through fields and pastures in moveless light else through desert spaces with its wild beauty untouched by the plough of man or animal graze. It was a slumbering and thirsty desert space where savage wild beasts would yet prowl at night.
Still uncompanioned
Still unaccomplished was the fateful quest;
Still she found not the one predestined face
For which she sought amid the sons of men.
Yet her search had not ended. The word of fate yet waited as the quest continued for the one predestined face which she sought amid the sons of men.
A grandiose silence
A grandiose silence wrapped the regal day:
The months had fed the passion of the sun
And now his burning breath assailed the soil.
A grand silence wrapped the days as the summer heat began to burn the earth.
The tiger-heats
The tiger heats prowled through the fainting earth;
All was licked up as by a lolling tongue.
Heat stealthily grew and prowled upon earth licking it with its thirty tongue.
The spring winds failed
The spring winds failed; the sky was set like bronze.
Spring was over and the sky was a bronze summer hue.
Closing Remarks
Season has changed and it is summer time as Savitri continues with her quest having jot yet found the chosen one.
