Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol, Book IX The Book of Eternal Night, Canto 1 Towards the Black Void, pp. 573-577

0:01 All in her made it with that mighty hour, as if the last remnant had been slain by death of the humanity that once was hers, assuming a spiritual wide control, making life see a mirror of heaven's sky. The young divinity in her earthly limbs filled with celestial strength, her mortal part. Over was the haunted pain, the rending fear. Her grief had passed away. Her mind was still, her heart beat quietly with a sovereign force. There came a freedom from the heartstring's clutch. Now all her acts sprang from a godhead's calm. Calmly she laid upon the forest soil the dead who still reposed upon her breast, and bore to turn away from the dead form soul.

1:00 Now she rose to meet the dreadful God. That mightier spirit turned its mastering gaze on life and things inheritor of a work left to it unfinished from her halting past. When yet the mind, a passionate learner, toiled and I'll shaped instruments were crudely moved, transcended. Now was the poor human rule, a sovereign power? Was there a God like Will? A moment, yet she lingered motionless, and looked down on the dead man at her feet. Then, like a tree recovering from a wind, she raised her noble head.

1:44 Fronting her gaze, something stood there, unearthly, sombre, grand, a limitless denial of all being that wore the terror and wonder of a shape. In its appalling eyes. The tenebrous form bore the deep pity of destroying gods. A sorrowful irony curved the dreadful lips that speak the word of doom. Eternal night in the dire beauty of an immortal face, pitying a rose, receiving all that lives forever into its fathomless heart. Refuge of creatures from their anguish and world pain.

2:29 His shape was nothing is made real, His limbs were monuments of transience, and beneath brows of unwearying calm, large God like lids silent beheld the writhing serpent life unmoved. Their timeless, wide, unchanging gaze had seen the unprofitable cycles past, survived the passing of unnumbered stars and sheltered still the same immutable orbs. The two opposed each other with their eyes, woman and universal God around her, piling their void, unbearable loneliness upon her mighty uncompanioned soul. Many inhuman solitudes came close, vacant eternities forbidding hope laid upon her their huge and lifeless look, and to her ears silencing earthly sounds. A sad and formidable voice arose, which seemed the whole adverse worlds.

3:40 Unclasp it cried thy passionate influence, and relax, O slave of nature, changing tool of changeless law, Who vainly writhes rebellion to my yoke Thy elemental grasp. Weep and forget, Entomb thy passion in its living grave. Leave now the once loved spirits abandoned robe. Pass, lonely, back to thy vain life on earth. It ceased. She moved not, and it spoke again, lowering its mighty key to human chords. Yet a dread cry behind the uttered sounds, echoing all sadness and immortal scorn, moaned like a hunger of far wandering waves. Wilt thou forever keep thy passion at hold thyself a creature doomed like him to pass, denying his soul Death's calm and silent rest.

4:42 Relax thy grasp. This body is earth's and thine. His spirit now belongs to a greater power. Woman, thy husband suffers. Savitri drew back her heart's forest that clasped his body still where from her lap renounced on the smooth grass softly. It lay as often before in sleep, when from their couch she rose in the white dawn, called by her daily tasks. Now, too, as if called, she rose and stood gathered in lonely strength, like one who drops his mantle for a race and waits, the signal motionlessly swift, She knew not to what course her spirit Above, on the crypt summit of her secret form, like one left Sentinel on a mountain Crest, a fiery footed splendor, poison winged, watched, flaming silent with her voiceless soul, like a still sail upon a windless sea, White, passionless it road and anchored might waiting.

5:54 What far ridged impulse should arise out of the eternal depths, and cast its surge? Then death. The king lean boundless down, as leans night over tired lands, When evening pails and fading gleams breakdown the horizons walls. Nor yet the dust grows Mystic with the moon. The dim and awful godhead rose erect from his brief, stooping to his touch on earth. And like a dream that wakes out of a dream, forsaking the poor mold of that dead clay, another luminous satyavan arose, starting upright from the recumbent earth, as if someone over viewless border stepped, emerging on the edge of unseen worlds in the earth's day. The silent marvel stood between the mortal woman and the God. Such seemed he, as if one departed, came wearing the light of a celestial shape splendidly alien to the mortal air. The mind sought things long loved, and fell back, foiled from unfamiliar hues, beheld yet longed by the sweet radiant form, unsatisfied, incredulous of its two bright hints of heaven, too strange, the brilliant phantasm to life's clasp, desiring the warm

7:26 creations of the earth, reared in the ardor of material Suns, the senses seized in vain a glorious shade only the spirit knew, the spirit still, and the heart divine. The old loved heart, though changed between two realms, he stood, not wavering, but fixed in quiet, strong expectancy, Like one who sightless listens for a command. So were they immobile on that earthly field, powers not of earth, though one in human clay. On either side of 1-2 spirits strove. Silence battled with silence, vast with vast. But now the impulse of the path was felt, moving from the silence that supports the stars to touch the confines of the visible world.

8:26 Luminous, he moved away. Behind him death went slowly with his noiseless tread as seen in dream built fields. A shadowy herdsman glides behind some wanderer from his voiceless herds, and Savitri moved behind eternal death. Her mortal pace was equalled with the gods. Wordless, she travelled in her lover's steps, planting her human feet where his had trod into the perilous silences beyond.