Opening remarks
Death answers Savitri with a scorn mocking at her demand. Yet he grants her transient gifts to solace the parents of Satyavan.
Scornful cold assent
Death bowed his head in scornful cold assent,
The builder of this dreamlike earth for man
Who has mocked with vanity all gifts he gave.
Death bowed his head in cold acceptance of Savitri’s demand. He seemed to scorn at the builder of this dreamlike earth for man mocking all the vain and transient gifts he gave that would not last.
Disastrous voice
Uplifting his disastrous voice he spoke:
“Indulgent to the dreams my touch shall break,
I yield to his blind father’s longing heart
Kingdom and power and friends and greatness lost
And royal trappings for his peaceful age,
The pallid pomps of man’s declining days,
The silvered decadent glories of life’s fall.
With a disastrous voice he spoke. He yielded to Savitri’s demand and granted gifts to Satyavan’s blind father’s longing heart indulging with dreams that his touch would break. He grants him kingdom power and friends and greatness lost and royal trappings for a peaceful comfortable old age. He grants him the pale pomps for man’s declining days and the silvered but decadent glories of life’s winter season.
Goods I restore
To one who wiser grew by adverse Fate,
Goods I restore the deluded soul prefers
To impersonal nothingness’s bare sublime.
He grants to the king, grown wiser by adverse Fate, goods that deluded souls prefer to the bare sublime of impersonal nothingness.
Sensuous solace
The sensuous solace of the light I give
To eyes which could have found a larger realm,
A deeper vision in their fathomless night.
He grants the boon of sight as a solace to his senses mocking again that the king’s blindness could have been a blessing to open the deeper inner vision and discover larger realms in the dark night that covered his sight.
Desired and hoped
For that this man desired and asked in vain
While still he lived on earth and cherished hope.
It is this sight that the king most desired and asked in vain, while still he lived on earth and cherished hope, revealed Death.
Go mortal
Back from the grandeur of my perilous realms
Go, mortal, to thy small permitted sphere!
Having granted these boons, Death bids Savitri to go back from the grandeur of his perilous realm. As all mortals must she should stay in her small permitted sphere.
Hasten swift-footed
Hasten swift-footed, lest to slay thy life
The great laws thou hast violated, moved,
Open at last on thee their marble eyes.”
Finally Death bids her to hasten back swiftly lest the cold marble eyes of the dread guardians of the Law of Death open their eyes to slay her for violating them.
Closing Remarks
Thus Death grants the boons asked by Savitri and bids her to return back swiftly.
