The Distressed Queen, p. 437

Opening remarks
The queen felt distressed by the decree of fate augmented by Savitri’s choice.

The irrevocable decree
A Silence sealed the irrevocable decree,

A Silence fell upon the mood of those who heard the decree of fate, irrevocable as it is.

The word of Fate
The word of Fate that fell from heavenly lips
Fixing a doom no power could ever reverse
Unless heaven’s will itself could change its course.

The word of Fate was released through the lips of Narad. Having spoken it further fixed the inevitable destiny, a doom that no power could reverse unless the gods of Fate themselves changed their course.

So it seemed
Or so it seemed: yet from the silence rose
One voice that questioned changeless destiny,
A will that strove against the immutable Will.

To accept destiny helplessly seemed the only way. But the queen’s heart emed to revolt against the immutable Will.

A mother’s heart
A mother’s heart had heard the fateful speech
That rang like a sanction to the call of death
And came like a chill close to life and hope.

The heart of a mother had been pierced by the fateful speech that came as a sanction to the call of death and a cold stark ending to life and hope.

Extinguished fire
Yet hope sank down like an extinguished fire.

Hope sank down like a fire that has extinguished.

Laden inevitable hand
She felt the leaden inevitable hand
Invade the secrecy of her guarded soul
And smite with sudden pain its still content
And the empire of her hard-won quietude.

The queen felt the hard and heavy inevitable grip invading her secret soul space and smite it with sudden pain to snatch the empire of her hard won quietude.

Common hearts endure
Awhile she fell to the level of human mind,
A field of mortal grief and Nature’s law;
She shared, she bore the common lot of men
And felt what common hearts endure in Time.

For a while, the otherwise poised queen fell into the ordinary ways and the common outlook of things. She plunged into the turbulent fields of grief and laws of Nature to which the common humanity is prone. She felt what common hearts endure in time as they pass through life.

Earth’s question
Voicing earth’s question to the inscrutable power
The queen now turned to the still immobile seer:
Assailed by the discontent in Nature’s depths,
Partner in the agony of dumb driven things
And all the misery, all the ignorant cry,
Passionate like sorrow questioning heaven she spoke.

She raised the question before the sage, the question that humanity asks to God. Assailed by discontent and sharing the agony of the earth and its misery and ignorant cry, she questioned heaven.

Man’s revolt
Lending her speech to the surface soul on earth
She uttered the suffering in the world’s dumb heart
And man’s revolt against his ignorant fate.

The queen now lent her speech to the surface desire soul of earth and the suffering in the world and man’s revolt against fate.

Closing Remarks
The background is thereby made for the queen to raise the question for mankind giving the heavenly sage to reply through her to the average common humanity that revolts against God.