Around her body’s stillness all grew still

Savitri: Book VII, Canto II The parable of the search for the Soul (p.474-75) As the Voice touched, her body became a stark And rigid golden statue of motionless trance, A stone of God lit by an amethyst soul. Around her body’s stillness all grew still: Her heart listened to its slow measured beats, Her mind renouncing thought heard and was mute: “Why camest thou to this dumb deathbound earth, This ignorant life beneath indifferent skies Tied like a sacrifice on the altar of Time, O spirit, O immortal energy, If ’twas to nurse grief in a helpless heart Or with hard tearless eyes await thy doom? Arise, O soul, and vanquish Time and Death.” But Savitri’s heart replied in the dim night: “My strength is taken from me and given to Death. Why should I lift my hands to the shut heavens Or struggle with mute inevitable Fate Or hope in vain to uplift an ignorant race Who hug their lot and mock the saviour Light And see in Mind wisdom’s sole tabernacle, In its harsh peak and its inconscient base A rock of safety and an anchor of sleep? Is there a God whom any cry can move? He sits in peace and leaves the mortal’s strength Impotent against his calm omnipotent Law And Inconscience and the almighty hands of Death. What need have I, what need has Satyavan To avoid the black-meshed net, the dismal door, Or call a mightier Light into life’s closed room, A greater Law into man’s little world? Why should I strive with earth’s unyielding laws Or stave off death’s inevitable hour? This surely is best to pactise with my fate And follow close behind my lover’s steps And pass through night from twilight to the sun Across the tenebrous river that divides The adjoining parishes of earth and heaven. Then could we lie inarmed breast upon breast, Untroubled by thought, untroubled by our hearts, Forgetting man and life and time and its hours, Forgetting eternity’s call, forgetting God.”