Opened were gates of unforgettable bliss:
Two lives were locked within an earthly heaven
And fate and grief fled from that fiery hour.

Sri Aurobindo sums up their ‘joy of union’ in these three powerful lines: Savitri and Satyavan experience the opening of ‘gates’ or entrances to ‘unforgettable bliss’ and their lives are ‘locked’ together ‘within an earthly heaven’: they are here on the earth, in physical bodies, but they are experiencing a heavenly bliss. It is a ‘fiery hour’ for them, a time of intense feeling and fulfilment, so that any thoughts and misgivings that Savitri may have about the future – ‘fate and grief’ – just run away: there is no place for them during that first rapturous period of union.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savotri, Book 7]

The shadow of her lover’s doom arose
And fear laid hands upon her mortal heart.
The moments swift and ruthless raced; alarmed
Her thoughts, her mind remembered Narad’s date.

Now we see the human Savitri facing this ordeal: when she wakes in the stormy night its darkness reminds her of the threatening face of her future; like a ‘shadow’ looming up, the foreknowledge of the doom of her lover Satyavan rose up in her, ‘And fear laid hands upon her mortal heart.’ For the first time Savitri is experiencing grief and fear. Time now seems to be passing so quickly: ‘swift and ruthless’. ‘Ruthless’ means merciless, cruel: the moments are not stopping for anything, and they seem to race past. ‘Alarmed / Her thoughts, her mind remembered Narad’s date.’ Narad has foretold the exact day when Satyavan must die and now it is quickly coming closer.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

A trembling moved accountant of her riches,
She reckoned the insufficient days between:
A dire expectancy knocked at her breast;
Dreadful to her were the footsteps of the hours:
Grief came, a passionate stranger to her gate:
Banished when in his arms, out of her sleep
It rose at morn to look into her face.

Savitri becomes ‘A trembling moved accountant of her riches’: fearfully, ‘trembling’, she is counting how few days are left before Satyavan must die, reckoning up how many ‘insufficient days’ remain before the inevitable arrival of that fateful day, ‘Narad’s date’. Thinking of that day, which is drawing ever nearer, ‘A dire expectancy knocked at her breast;’ – her heart beats faster with fear. So the ‘footsteps of the hours’ – the passing of time – becomes dreadful to her: ‘Grief came, a passionate stranger’. Grief has been a complete stranger to her until now, but now he comes ‘to her gate’, and enters her being. She feels this grief passionately, with great intensity. When she is in Satyavan’s arms, that grief is ‘banished’ – if someone is banished, he is exiled, sent away and not supposed to return; but although grief is ‘banished’ as long as she is in Satyavan’s embrace, when she wakes in the morning it emerges from her sleep and looks ‘into her face’. Then she sees it and feels it intensely. Grief had been a stranger to her, but now she cannot escape from it.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Out of her separate self she looked and saw,
Moving amid the unconscious faces loved,
In mind a stranger though in heart so near,
The ignorant smiling world go happily by
Upon its way towards an unknown doom
And wondered at the careless lives of men.

From her inner being, ‘her separate self’, Savitri looked out at the people around her, who are quite unconscious of what she is experiencing. She loves them and feels very near to them in her heart, but she feels separated from them ‘in mind’ because she knows something that they do not know and that she cannot share with them. In that way she feels a stranger to them, ‘though in heart so near’. She sees ‘The ignorant smiling world go happily by’: people are just living their lives and smiling happily because they do not know, they are ignorant, they do not realise that their road, their ‘way’ is leading them towards ‘doom’, towards a disaster, something very, very painful and terrible and she feels surprised, amazed that they can live in such a carefree way without anxiety, without the grief of foreknowledge, without suffering. She wonders how they can go on being so carefree. But of course it is because they do not know what she knows.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Her quiet visage still and sweet and calm,
Her graceful daily acts were now a mask;
In vain she looked upon her depths to find
A ground of stillness and the spirit’s peace.

Nevertheless, Savitri is not showing any outward signs of her grief. At the beginning of the poem, in Canto One of Book One, Sri Aurobindo mentioned that she was ‘Too great to impart the peril and the pain’. She does not share her dreadful foreknowledge with anyone, or give any outward hint of it, but keeps all her grief to herself. ‘Her quiet visage’, her unperturbed face, was ‘still and sweet and calm’. But all the everyday things that she does, ‘Her graceful daily acts’ have now become ‘a mask’, a disguise which does not reflect her inner state. She is trying to find deep within herself a basis of ‘stillness and the spirit’s peace’; but it is in vain, she does not find it.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Still veiled from her was the silent Being within
Who sees life’s drama pass with unmoved eyes,
Supports the sorrow of the mind and heart
And bears in human breasts the world and fate.
A glimpse or flashes came, the Presence was hid.

Savitri has not yet found her inner being, her inner divinity, ‘the silent Being within’, the Witness ‘Who sees life’s drama pass with unmoved eyes’. Each of us has such a silent Being within, who is not disturbed or troubled by what happens on the surface, who ‘Supports the sorrow of the mind and heart’ and gives us the strength to bear whatever ‘the world and fate’ may do to us; but we are not usually aware of that supporting Being within us, as Savitri is not at this moment. From time to time she gets a glimpse, or a flashing impression of it, but its Presence is still hidden from her.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

These she controlled, nothing was shown outside:
She was still to them the child they knew and loved;
The sorrowing woman they saw not within.

Savitri controls her ‘violent heart’ with all the extremes of feeling that it is experiencing and her ‘passionate will’; this is enabling her to behave as if nothing is wrong. Nobody sees that: ‘nothing was shown outside’. To the people around her she still looks just the same, ‘the child they knew and loved’ – for of course she is still very young in age. Nobody notices that she has become a mature woman through the intensity of her grief and fear. All that was kept within, ‘nothing was shown outside’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

All-love was hers and its one heavenly cord
Bound all to all with her as golden tie.
But when her grief to the surface pressed too close,
These things, once gracious adjuncts of her joy,
Seemed meaningless to her, a gleaming shell,
Or were a round mechanical and void,
Her body’s actions shared not by her will.

Savitri is carrying ‘All-love’ within her, it is her nature to love all; in her, the ‘heavenly cord’ of love connects everything to everything else, and she herself is the ‘golden tie’, the golden thread that connects everything. But now she is experiencing ‘the Heart’s Grief and Pain’ and when her grief surges up too close to the surface the daily actions that she used to do joyfully as an expression of her love and joy, as ‘gracious adjuncts of her joy’, begin to seem ‘meaningless to her’: ‘a gleaming shell’, a beautiful outer appearance with nothing inside or, as household tasks often are to us, a ‘mechanical’ empty routine: just things that have to be done: the washing up, the laundry, the sweeping, things that the body does because they have to be done, but her will is not in it. ‘Her body’s actions shared not by her will.’ An ‘adjunct’ is something that is added on, an extra. Formerly, all the tasks that she did with love were part of her joy of being with Satyavan; but now, when her grief becomes too strong, then the gracious daily activities begin to seem meaningless and empty, because they no longer correspond to her inner state. Here we see the humanness of Savitri but also her courage, the strength of her willpower, the strength that is with her even in her most human parts, enabling her not to show her suffering to anybody. It is kept secret within her and ‘ No change was in her beautiful motions seen’: neither in her words nor on her face nor in her behaviour does she show anything.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Imprint thyself for every nerve to keep
That thrills to thee the message of my heart.
For soon we part and who shall know how long
Before the great wheel in its monstrous round
Restore us to each other and our love?”

This continues what Savitri longs to say to Satyavan, but cannot. To ‘imprint’ means ‘to make a lasting impression’; she would like to urge him to imprint himself on the nerves of her body, the nerves that thrill at his touch and carry to him the message of her heart. She wants to keep that lasting impression, on ‘every nerve’ of her body because soon they are going to be separated; and once they are separated who knows how long it will take before the cycles of time will bring them back together. To ‘restore’ something to somebody means to return something they have lost.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Too well she loved to speak a fateful word
And lay her burden on his happy head;
She pressed the outsurging grief back into her breast
To dwell within silent, unhelped, alone.

But of course she cannot say these things to Satyavan, because that would mean telling him about her foreknowledge, the ‘burden’, the heavy load of grief and fear and pain that she is carrying. This shows the extent of her love: she cannot speak out those words and ‘lay her burden on his happy head’. When her grief surges up like a wave and wants to be expressed she presses it back into her heart and keeps it there ‘silent, unhelped, alone’. She will not allow it to speak, it cannot be helped, it is alone and uncomforted, as she herself is. Satyavan is still happy and free and she is not going to share her dreadful ‘burden’ with him by speaking any ‘fateful word’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Because he feels something of Savitri’s deep need to be close to him, Satyavan does spend as much time as possible with her; ‘All of his speeding days that he could spare’ from his daily duties he devotes to her, helping to enrich her hours by being with her, holding her, speaking tender words to her, clasping her to his heart. Here we learn how Satyavan has to spend his time, what his daily tasks are. He spends hours in the forest, ‘hewing wood’ which Savitri will use to heap the fires of altar and kitchen, and ‘hunting food in the wild sylvan glades’. ‘Sylvan’ is an adjective referring to woods and forests. The forest where they live has ‘glades’, open spaces where deer or other animals might gather. And of course he has to help his father who is ‘sightless’, blind. But all the time that he can spare he devotes to Savitri and helps ‘to increase the hours’, to enrich her hours, ‘by the nearness of his presence and his clasp’, the ‘lavish softness’ with which he speaks many ‘heart-seeking words’ to her and close embraces when ‘beating … of heart on heart’ can be felt. ‘Lavish’ means ‘generous’ or ‘abundant’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Although with a vain imaginary bliss
Of fiery union through death’s door of escape
She dreamed of her body robed in funeral flame,
She knew she must not clutch that happiness
To die with him and follow, seizing his robe
Across our other countries, travellers glad
Into the sweet or terrible Beyond.

Sometimes Savitri imagines following Satyavan into death by joining him on the funeral pyre when his body is cremated – the bliss of a ‘fiery union through death’s door of escape’ – and dreams ‘of her body robed in funeral flame’, following the traditional practice of ‘sati’ prevalent in some parts of India in the past. But she knows she cannot do that: ‘she must not clutch that happiness’ to follow him into death, holding onto ‘his robe’, accompanying him wherever he goes into ‘our other countries’, other nonmaterial worlds. She feels that the two of them together would have been happy ‘travellers’ into the ‘Beyond’ whether it is ‘sweet or terrible’, but knows that this option is not open to her. Why?

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Often it seemed to her the ages’ pain
Had pressed their quintessence into her single woe,
Concentrating in her a tortured world.

In this situation, it often seems to Savitri as if all the ‘pain’ that has ever been suffered in the course of time, through all the ages, has been concentrated in her. A ‘quintessence’ is obtained when a substance is distilled and purified again and again, five times, until the purest possible concentrated essence remains. Savitri feels that in ‘her single woe’ – her own private sorrow, she is experiencing the concentrated essence of all the pain of ‘a tortured world.’

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Thus in the silent chamber of her soul
Cloistering her love to live with secret grief
She dwelt like a dumb priest with hidden gods
Unappeased by the wordless offering of her days,
Lifting to them her sorrow like frankincense,
Her life the altar, herself the sacrifice.

Savitri keeps all these intense feelings hidden within her. It is as if deep inside her there is a secret room, ‘the silent chamber of her soul’ where she keeps her love and her grief secretly secluded. A ‘cloister’ is an architectural feature of a monastery or nunnery, an arcaded walk enclosing a garden, a secluded space for people who do not go out into the world. Sometimes the word ‘cloister’ can be used to refer to the whole monastery or nunnery. The innermost chamber of Savitri’s heart is like that: an enclosed and secret place. There she keeps her love and her grief hidden, and she herself lives in that deepest part of herself ‘like a dumb priest’, who is wordlessly offering worship to ‘hidden gods’. But however much she offers to them, they are ‘unappeased’; they are not satisfied by the silent offering of her days. She is offering them her sacrifice of ‘sorrow like frankincense’. ‘Frankincense’ is a resin which has a beautiful perfume that is used to purify a sacred space and offered to the gods or in a church. Savitri’s sorrow is like that perfumed offering; ‘Her life’ is ‘the altar’ on which she makes the offering, and she herself is the sacrifice.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Although life-born, an infant of the hours,
Immortal it walked unslayable as the gods:
Her spirit stretched measureless in strength divine,
An anvil for the blows of Fate and Time:

The poet says that although Savitri’s love has been born from life, as a child of Time, ‘an infant of the hours’, it has grown ‘Immortal’ and ‘unslayable’. Like the gods it cannot be killed; nothing can destroy this powerful love of hers. And her spirit also extends itself so far ‘in strength divine’ that it cannot be measured. It becomes like a huge ‘anvil’. An ‘anvil’ is a big slab of iron on which a metalworker shapes metal. A craftsman who is making wrought iron or a sword will hammer it on the anvil to strengthen the metal. The characteristic of the anvil is that even when it is subjected to the heavy blows by the metal worker, it remains strong and stable. Savitri’s spirit has become like that: wide and strong enough to take all the ‘blows’ that ‘Fate and Time’ can give.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Or tired of sorrow’s passionate luxury,
Grief’s self became calm, dull-eyed, resolute,
Awaiting some issue of its fiery struggle,
Some deed in which it might for ever cease,
Victorious over itself and death and tears.

When we have very intense feelings it happens that they cannot sustain the same strength for a long time. Thus for Savitri too, it sometimes happens that her sorrow, her intense grief gets tired and becomes ‘calm, dull-eyed’, indifferent, ‘resolute’, determined, waiting for the outcome of this ‘fiery struggle’, all this burning effort, as if waiting for something that perhaps can be done, ‘some deed’ that would enable her grief to express itself and be over, having conquered ‘itself and death and tears.’ Some deep calm determination comes over the suffering emotional part of her being, as if the grief itself has grown tired ‘of sorrow’s passionate luxury.’ If we experience a lot of sorrow it may become self-indulgent; some part of the lower emotional self may be enjoying it, revelling in it – and then it may start to become tired of the grief, and that helps to turn the intense suffering into something else, something ‘calm’, resigned and ‘resolute’, unwavering.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

So her grief’s heavy sky shut in her heart.
A still self hid behind but gave no light:
No voice came down from the forgotten heights;
Only in the privacy of its brooding pain
Her human heart spoke to the body’s fate.

Savitri’s mood reflects the weather: like the rain-clouds that are shutting the earth away from the light of the sun, the heavy grey sky of her grief is preventing her from receiving any light from her deeper ‘still self’ which seems to be in hiding, and she has forgotten all about the higher reaches of her being; ‘No voice’ is coming down to her from there. However, in the privacy of her ‘brooding pain’ – ‘brooding’ means ‘being engaged in profound contemplation’ – her heart is speaking ‘to the body’s fate.’ Some deep silent communication is going on between the suffering human heart and the body that is fated to lose its loved companion.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]