Opening remarks
The Canto starts with Aswapati receiving a command from within. Savitri has grown up and it is time that she must find her spouse. That moment is beautifully described when this thought dawns upon Aswapati. It is a divine moment indeed.
Burdened morn
A morn that seemed a new creation’s front,
Bringing a greater sunlight, happier skies,
Came burdened with a beauty moved and strange
Out of the changeless origin of things.
Though each day seems like every other day, yet some days, some moments come burdened with the scroll of destiny. They open doors to a new becoming, bringing a greater light and vaster new horizons. They come as if on god-wings bearing an unearthly beauty emerging out of the formless, changeless origin of things.
An ancient longing
An ancient longing struck again new roots:
The air drank deep of unfulfilled desire;
The high trees trembled with a wandering wind
Like souls that quiver at the approach of joy,
And in a bosom of green secrecy
For ever of its one love-note untired
A lyric co¨ıl cried among the leaves.
During these moments, the ancient longings of earth and its unfulfilled desires wake up again and the trees and winds quiver with the anticipation of a joy. A coil kept crying its single note of love among the leaves untiringly repeating its cry of love.
King Aswapati listened
Away from the terrestrial murmur turned
Where transient calls and answers mix their flood,
King Aswapati listened through the ray
To other sounds than meet the sense-formed ear.
Yogi and King Aswapati withdrew inwardly in some deeper inner space and intuitively received the sounds that our outer hearing cannot hear.
Voice repressed
On a subtle interspace which rings our life,
Unlocked were the inner spirit’s trance-closed doors:
The inaudible strain in Nature could be caught;
Across this cyclic tramp of eager lives,
Across the deep urgency of present cares,
Earth’s wordless hymn to the Ineffable
Arose from the silent heart of the cosmic Void;
He heard the voice repressed of unborn Powers
Murmuring behind the luminous bars of Time.
There is a subtle space behind the surfaces of life where the doors of the Spirit can be unlocked and the voices unheard by mortal ears can be received. Behind our cares and worries and the eager restlessness there rises from the heart of earth a hymn to the Divine. The voice of unborn powers murmurs through spaces of time that are yet barred to man.
The mighty yearning
Again the mighty yearning raised its flame
That asks a perfect life on earth for men
And prays for certainty in the uncertain mind
And shadowless bliss for suffering human hearts
And Truth embodied in an ignorant world
And godhead divinising mortal forms.
The mighty yearning of earth for a perfect life here and her prayer for certainty in the ignorant mind, a shadowless bliss for the suffering heart, and embodied Truth and divinisation of mortal forms once again lit up its flame of aspiration.
A word that leaped
A word that leaped from some far sky of thought,
Admitted by the cowled receiving scribe
Traversed the echoing passages of his brain
And left its stamp on the recording cells.
A word that leaped from some far rim of thought entered the brain and reverberated and echoed laving its stamp upon the cells.
Closing Remarks
Thus Aswapati prepares to receive the heavenly message.
