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Savitri’s Response, pp. 589-590

Opening Remarks
Savitri now responds with grit and determination to the advice given by Death to haste swiftly with the gifts.

Equal spirit
But Savitri answered the disdainful Shade:
“World-spirit, I was thy equal spirit born.

Savitri answers the disdainful god that she too is a cosmic Power, equal to her opponent.

Mortal in immortality
My will too is a law, my strength a god.
I am immortal in my mortality.

Her will too is a law and her strength is as a god’s. She is conscious of the immortal self in her mortal body.

I tremble not
I tremble not before the immobile gaze
Of the unchanging marble hierarchies
That look with the stone eyes of Law and Fate.

Savitri asserts that she is not afraid of Death’s immobile gaze nor trembles before the unchanging marble-like hierarchies with their fixed stony eyes of Law and Fate that cannot be altered.

Living fire
My soul can meet them with its living fire.

Savitri is confident of meeting the marble gaze and the iron laws with the living fire of her soul.

Give me back again
Out of thy shadow give me back again
Into earth’s flowering spaces Satyavan
In the sweet transiency of human limbs
To do with him my spirit’s burning will.

“Give me back Satyavan”, insists Savitri seeking his release from the shadows into earth’s flowering spaces, into the sweetness of limbs that are transient and for her spirit’s burning will.

I will follow with him
I will bear with him the ancient Mother’s load,
I will follow with him earth’s path that leads to God.

Savitri says that she would want to bear with him the load of earth and follow with him earth’s path that leads to God.

Traveling together
Else shall the eternal spaces open to me,
While round us strange horizons far recede,
Travelling together the immense unknown.

She would walk with Satyavan into the eternal spaces opening for them as strange horizons recede far and they travel together through the immense unknown.

Untrod Beyond
For I who have trod with him the tracts of Time,
Can meet behind his steps whatever night
Or unimaginable stupendous dawn
Breaks on our spirits in the untrod Beyond.

Savitri affirms that she has trod with him the tracts of Time and hence can follow his steps through whatever night or unimaginable stupendous dawn breaks upon their souls in the untrod paths Beyond.

I shall pursue
Wherever thou leadst his soul I shall pursue.”

Savitri assures Death that she will pursue Satyavan wherever he leads his soul.

Closing remarks
Savitri’s clear and bold message conveys to death that she is not going to abandon Satyavan and will pursue him in all domains for the great work they have to do together.

Death creates an illusion, not only of the vanity of life, but regards life itself as an error, a mistake, even a sin to be born upon earth.