Death in the Forest

By her still sleeping husband lain she gazed

Looks back upon the sunlit fields of life

Lifting his head above the huge dark stream

All she had been and done she lived again.

Of memories swept through her and fled away

Then silently she rose and, service done,

By Satyavan upon a forest stone.

Perhaps she felt in the dim forest huge

Perhaps the shrouded Voice spoke some still word.

She spoke but with guarded lips and tranquil face

Should let pass into the mother's unknowing breast,

A dire foreknowledge of the grief to come.

All else she pressed back into her anguished heart

¹The Book of Death was taken from Canto Three of an early version of Savitri which had only six cantos and an epilogue. It was slightly revised at a late stage and a number of new lines were added, but it was never fully worked into the final version of the poem. Its original designation, "Canto Three", has been retained as a reminder of this.

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Here on the emerald edge of the vast woods

Under the blue rifts of the forest sky,

Of this great woodland that enringed my thoughts

Wandered, but this small clearing was my world.

To go with Satyavan holding his hand

Herbs he has trod and know the forest flowers

That starts and ceases, rich far rustle of boughs

Release me now and let my heart have rest."

O calm child-sovereign with the eyes that rule.

Pitying our barren days; so dost thou serve

All that thou doest, all our minds conceive,

Then the doomed husband and the woman who knew

Where beauty and grandeur and unspoken dream,

Communing with the secrecy of God.

Because she moved with him through his green haunts:

Innumerable of every odour and hue

And strange rich-plumaged birds, to every cry

With the shrill singer's name more sweetly called.

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His boyhood's comrades and his playfellows,

Here in this world whose every mood he knew:

He shared, to every wild emotion felt

The voice that soon would cease from tender words

For lonely memory when none by her walked

But little dwelt her mind upon their sense;

Love in her bosom hurt with the jagged edges

Crying, "Now, now perhaps his voice will cease

Sometimes her eyes looked round as if their orbs

But Satyavan had paused. He meant to finish

They two might wander free in the green deep

A tree that raised its tranquil head to heaven

The breeze with amorous wideness of its boughs,

Brown, rough and strong hidden in its emerald dress.

Of the bright face and body which she loved.

And every moment she economised

The miser of his poor remaining gold.

He sang high snatches of a sage's chant

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And sometimes paused to cry to her sweet speech

She like a pantheress leaped upon his words

But as he worked, his doom upon him came.

Travelled through his body biting as they passed

Strove to rend life's strong heart-cords and be free.

A moment in a wave of rich relief

Rejoicing and resumed his confident toil

Hewed at him and his labour ceased: lifting

Far from him like an instrument of pain.

And he cried to her, "Savitri, a pang

Were piercing it and not the living branch.

When it is sundered and must lose its life.

And guard me with thy hands from evil fate:

Then Savitri sat under branches wide,

Which his keen axe had cloven, — that she shunned;

She guarded him in her bosom and strove to soothe

All grief and fear were dead within her now

His suffering, the impulse that opposes pain

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Were the one mortal feeling left. It passed:

But now his sweet familiar hue was changed

Dimmed over, forsaken of the clear light she loved.

Vacant of the bright spirit's luminous gaze.

He cried out in a clinging last despair,

Lean down, my soul, and kiss me while I die."

His failed, losing last sweetness of response;

His mouth still with her living mouth, as if

Then grew aware they were no more alone.

Near her she felt a silent shade immense

An awful hush had fallen upon the place:

A terror and an anguish filled the world,

Had taken a sensible form. A cosmic mind

Contemning all with its unbearable gaze

It saw in its immense destroying thought

Rejecting with calm disdain Nature's delight,

Voicing the unreality of things

And its brief and vain recurrence without cease,

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Doomed to his Nought the illusory universe,

And its imitation of eternity.

And Satyavan had passed from her embrace.

END OF BOOK EIGHT

END OF PART TWO

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