The Winds of Wonder

Behold this image cast by light and love

Behold this image cast by light and love

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By

RY Deshpande

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Behold this image cast by light and love

Although in pauses of our human lives

Earth keeps for man some short and perfect hours

When the inconscient tread of Time can seem

The eternal moment which the deathless live,

Yet rare that touch upon the mortal’s world:

Hardly a soul and body here are born

In the fierce difficult movement of the stars,

Whose life can keep the paradisal note,

Its rhythm repeat the many-toned melody

Tirelessly throbbing through the rapturous air

Caught in the song that sways the Apsara’s limbs

When she floats gleaming like a cloud of light,

A wave of joy on heaven’s moon-stone floor. ||106.47||

Behold this image cast by light and love,

A stanza of the ardour of the gods

Perfectly rhymed, a pillared ripple of gold! ||106.48||

Her body like a brimmed pitcher of delight

Shaped in a splendour of gold-coloured bronze

As if to seize earth’s truth of hidden bliss. ||106.49||

Dream-made illumined mirrors are her eyes

Draped subtly in a slumberous fringe of jet,

Retaining heaven’s reflections in their depths. ||106.50||

Even as her body, such is she within,

Heaven’s lustrous mornings gloriously recur,

Like drops of fire upon a silver page,

In her young spirit yet untouched with tears. ||106.51||

All beautiful things eternal seem and new

To virgin wonder in her crystal soul. ||106.52||

The unchanging blue reveals its spacious thought;

Marvellous the moon floats on through wondering skies;

Earth’s flowers spring up and laugh at time and death;

The charmed mutations of the enchanter life

Race like bright children past the smiling hours. ||106.53||

If but this joy of life could last, nor pain

Throw its bronze note into her rhythmed days! ||106.54||

Behold her, singer with the prescient gaze,

And let thy blessing chant that this fair child

Shall pour the nectar of a sorrowless life

Around her from her lucid heart of love,

Heal with her bliss the tired breast of earth

And cast like a happy snare felicity. ||106.55||

6 responses to “Behold this image cast by light and love”

  1. RY Deshpande Avatar
    RY Deshpande

    Narad:

    He flung on her his vast immortal look;

    His inner gaze surrounded her with its light

    And reining back knowledge from his immortal lips

    He cried to her, “Who is this that comes, the bride,

    The flame-born, and round her illumined head

    Pouring their lights her hymeneal pomps

    Move flashing about her? From what green glimmer of glades

    Retreating into dewy silences

    Or half-seen verge of waters moon-betrayed

    Bringst thou this glory of enchanted eyes? ||106.23|| … “

    He cried to her “But Aswapathy answered to the seer… Behold this image …” That “But” is the magic of the narrative.

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  2. justynjedraszewski Avatar
    justynjedraszewski

    Dear Sir 🙏

    This is supernal voice, pure magic of powerful poetry complementing Your previous message with detailed passages of Savitri.

    lnvisible Temple of Divine Grace with Human – Divine interaction throughout evolutionary speedy film – this is the core of the poem.

    How can anybody judge, weigh on balance its treasures like diamond or silver? Only by entering this Temple in silent admiration can we receive Her glance. Secret of Savitri is given after you loose your mind, your head and yourself completely in Her. This is what happened to Her Victim – the Death who took life from Satyavan. The cycle is complete: the enemy is gone and Satyavan is back. The difficulty is on the side of reader – how is it possible?

    Huta’s paintings perfectly illuminated this difficult reception, she used colours, figures, lights of our dreams, fairies and hopes.

    Justyn

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  3. RY Deshpande Avatar
    RY Deshpande

    Was the purpose of Narad’s visit to Aswapati’s palace to deliver the Word of Fate the moment Savitri had found Love? That was the immediate cause, a pretext. The Divine Shakti had embodied herself in a human form, through it to win victory over Death, the universal Being of Ruin and Destruction, the formidable Denier of the Divine. To meet her and to pay worshipping respects to her is the celebration of his devotion and bhakti. The Divine in the Physical is an exceptional Glory and Joy, and Narad makes a Gangestic haste to be at Madra on the banks of Alacananda. That is his contribution too to the evolutionary process the soul of which is Satyavan, Savitri by her occult-yogic tapasyā accomplishing it.

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  4. RY Deshpande Avatar
    RY Deshpande

    There is something sweet and intimate and beautiful in its exhilaration in

    He cried to her, “Who is this that comes, the bride,

    The flame-born, … ?

    “Who is this that comes?” is not a question; it is exquisite loving astonishment in its fondness, of extreme joyous tenderness and closeness, in its sparkling excitedness. Imagine your young youthful grandson is suddenly visiting you after a long time, and you burst with joy and ask him, that is, you welcome him, with “who is it that comes?” You are not asking a question, you are thrilled in the warmth of relationship.

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  5. The Divine Yajña Celebrating the Death of Satyavan – The Winds of Wonder Avatar
    The Divine Yajña Celebrating the Death of Satyavan – The Winds of Wonder

    […] Aswapati introduces Savitri to Narad — A Comment about a Painting by Huta Behold this image cast by light and love […]

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  6. RY Deshpande Avatar
    RY Deshpande

    Reference may also be made to the following posts:

    https://thewindsofwonder.org/2026/01/25/the-divine-yajna-celebrating-the-death-of-satyavan/

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