Opening Remarks
Savitri has arrived at the spot where she is destined to meet Satyavan. The moment of their meeting draws near.
This day of Fate
All she remembered on this day of Fate,
The road that hazarded not the solemn depths
But turned away to flee to human homes,
The wilderness with its mighty monotone,
The morning like a lustrous seer above,
The passion of the summits lost in heaven,
The titan murmur of the endless woods.
Savitri intuitively senses a road that is as if leading to a human home. She turns towards that road leaving the solemn depths of the dense forest. The wilderness was a long stretch while the morning shone above like a seer watching from summits high the sound of winds murmuring in the woods.
Wicket gate
As if a wicket gate to joy were there
Ringed in with voiceless hint and magic sign,
Upon the margin of an unknown world
Reclined the curve of a sun-held recess;
Groves with strange flowers like eyes of gazing nymphs
Peered from their secrecy into open space,
Boughs whispering to a constancy of light
Sheltered a dim and screened felicity,
And slowly a supine inconstant breeze
Ran like a fleeting sigh of happiness
Over slumbrous grasses pranked with green and gold.
The path opening before her felt like a small gate to joy. The opening was filled with hints and signs on the margins of a beautiful unknown world. A recess was there opening to the light of the sun and filled with strange flower groves gazing like the eyes of heavenly nymphs. The boughs whispered to the light sheltering a screened felicity and breeze running through it like a sigh of happiness. The grass slumbered as if playing a prank with the green of the forest and the gold of the light.
Intimate voices
Hidden in the forest’s bosom of loneliness
Amid the leaves the inmate voices called,
Sweet like desires enamoured and unseen,
Cry answering to low insistent cry.
Savitri hears the cry of unseen birds and whispers of the winds responding to each other like sweet unseen desires that enamour us.
Dumb remotenesses
Behind slept emerald dumb remotenesses,
Haunt of a Nature passionate, veiled, denied
To all but her own vision lost and wild.
There was the sense of remote spaces, dumb haunts, passionate and wild and veiled that were lost and inaccessible to all but her own vision.
Free from cares
Earth in this beautiful refuge free from cares
Murmured to the soul a song of strength and peace.
Here, in this beautiful refuge, Earth free from cares murmured a song of strength and peace to the soul.
A single path
Only one sign was there of a human tread:
A single path, shot thin and arrowlike
Into this bosom of vast and secret life,
Pierced its enormous dream of solitude.
Amidst this remote loneliness of primeval earth there was only one sign of human tread in the form of a single path. Thin and arrow like it shot into the bosom of this vast and secret life of Nature piercing its enormous, dreaming solitude.
Closing Remarks
The passage serves as a beautiful backdrop to the meeting of Savitri and Satyavan.
