Opening Remarks
Savitri has reached her new home in the Shalwa groves to live with Satyavan. We have a beautiful description of the place where her future life will unfold.
Titan solitudes
A couchant earth wakened in its dumb muse
Looked up at her from a vast indolence:
Hills wallowing in a bright haze, large lands
That lolled at ease beneath the summer heavens,
Region on region spacious in the sun,
Cities like chrysolites in the wide blaze
And yellow rivers pacing lion-maned
Led to the Shalwa marches’ emerald line,
A happy front to iron vastnesses
And austere peaks and titan solitudes.
It was a space where earth lay prostrate as if awake and musing in silence. As Savitri travelled to the Shalwa grove, the earth looked up at her from her state of vast inertia and sleep. The place was surrounded by hills wallowing in bright haze and large lands at ease beneath the summer sun. She went past cities cut out like yellow gems blazing in the sun and rivers pacing like a lion’s mane. The Shalwa grove neared with emerald trees fronting the vast landscape and austere peaks and deep vast solitudes greeted her.
The fair and fated place
Once more was near the fair and fated place,
The borders gleaming with the groves’ delight
Where first she met the face of Satyavan
And he saw like one waking into a dream
Some timeless beauty and reality,
The moon-gold sweetness of heaven’s earth-born child.
Once more Savitri neared the place of her destiny where she had first met Satyavan along the borders of the groves that filled her heart with joy. It is here that Satyavan had seen in her as if in a dream a timeless beauty made real to earth with her moon-gold sweetness as of heaven’s earth-born child.
The past receded
The past receded and the future neared:
Far now behind lay Madra’s spacious halls,
The white carved pillars, the cool dim alcoves,
The tinged mosaic of the crystal floors,
The towered pavilions, the wind-rippled pools
And gardens humming with the murmur of bees,
Forgotten soon or a pale memory
The fountain’s plash in the white stone-bound pool,
The thoughtful noontide’s brooding solemn trance,
The colonnade’s dream grey in the quiet eve,
The slow moonrise gliding in front of Night.
The past receded and future drew near. The Madra’s spacious halls, the palace where Savitri had grown up was left far behind. The white, carved marble pillars, the cool dim alcoves and the tinged mosaic crystal floors, the towered pavilions the wind-rippled pools and gardens humming with the murmur of bees were soon forgotten and became a pale memory. So also was forgotten the fountain’s plash in the white stone-bound pool, the noontide’s trance-like solemnity, the colonnade’s dreamy quiet evening and the slow moonrise gliding in the night.
Closing Remarks
Through exquisite beautiful images Sri Aurobindo brings the place through which Savitri travels near to us and vivid to the mind’s eye.
