Sanskrit
यत्तदग्रे विषमिव परिणामेऽमृतोपमम् । तत्सुखं सात्त्विकं प्रोक्तमात्मबुद्धिप्रसादजम् ॥ ३७ ॥
yat tad agre viṣam iva pariṇāme'mṛtopamam tat sukhaṃ sāttvikaṃ proktam ātmabuddhiprasādajam
Translation
Which at first is as venom but in the end is as nectar; that pleasure is said to be pure, born of the blissful knowledge of the Self.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
Krishna makes the investment structure explicit with an image: sattvic happiness tastes like poison at first and like nectar in the end, arising from the clarity, prasada, of self-knowledge. This poison-then-nectar arc is the cleanest single metaphor in the whole guna-typology project, and it directly inverts the arc rajasic happiness gets in the very next verse.