The Stage for the Meeting, pp. 390-391 & Closing Remarks for the Canto

Opening Remarks
This beautiful space full of wonder and joy was chosen by the gods who weave destiny for the meeting of Savitri and Satyavan.

First satisfied plan
All was in line with her first satisfied plan;
Moved by a universal will of joy
The trees bloomed in their green felicity
And the wild children brooded not on pain.

It was a space where one could experience the touch of harmony and universal joy in keeping with the original plan of nature. The trees bloomed and the animal kind brooded not on pain as man does.

Stern and giant tract
At the end reclined a stern and giant tract
Of tangled depths and solemn questioning hills,
Peaks like a bare austerity of the soul,
Armoured, remote and desolately grand
Like the thought-screened infinities that lie
Behind the rapt smile of the Almighty’s dance.

At the end of the path running through the hills and the depths, they concealed, surrounded by bare austere hills Savitri came to a remote space grand in its desolateness. It was like the infinities screened by the thought behind the dance of creation emerging from the Almighty’s smile.

Matted forest-head
A matted forest-head invaded heaven
As if a blue-throated ascetic peered
From the stone fastness of his mountain cell
Regarding the brief gladness of the days;
His vast extended spirit couched behind.

A mountain peak with forest trees seeming like the matted head of Shiva, the blue-throated ascetic. He seemed as if peering out from his mountain cave looking down upon the brief joys of passing things while holding back his vast spirit.

Retiring from the world
A mighty murmur of immense retreat
Besieged the ear, a sad and limitless call
As of a soul retiring from the world.

A mighty murmur held the ears as a sad and limitless call of a renunciate soul retiring from the world.

The ambiguous Mother
This was the scene which the ambiguous Mother
Had chosen for her brief felicitous hour;
Here in this solitude far from the world
Her part she began in the world’s joy and strife.

This was the scene that mother Earth, full of danger and delight, had kept for the brief felicity that would emerge through this wonderful meeting. This spot was chosen by the soul of Savitri for the scroll of destiny to unfold. Here in this far off corner of the world, in this solitude, Savitri began her part in the world’s joy and strife.

The mystic courts
Here were disclosed to her the mystic courts,
The lurking doors of beauty and surprise,
The wings that murmur in the golden house,
The temple of sweetness and the fiery aisle.

It is here that Savitri experienced the mystic charm of love and the wonder and surprise of sudden revelations. This was the spot where she would undertake the tremendous journey to the golden doors of destiny. Here she would meet God in flesh in the temple of sweetness and the fiery aisles of love.

Love met Savitri
A stranger on the sorrowful roads of Time,
Immortal under the yoke of death and fate,
A sacrificant of the bliss and pain of the spheres,
Love in the wilderness met Savitri.

Here Savitri, the embodiment of immortal love, had come. A stranger to sorrow Love in her had chosen to pass under the yoke of fate and death. A priest sacrificing the bliss and pain of the worlds to redeem creation, Love in this wilderness met Savitri.

Closing Remarks
We have been now taken to the place of destiny where the epic will unfold as strife and wrestle between Love and Death.

Closing Remarks for the Canto
This beautiful Canto throws us bright hints of the meeting between Savitri and Satyavan. In this desolate corner, the Divine Mother will enact her drama far and remote from the eyes of the world.