Canto 23The Infinitesimal Infinite
Book 16. Part Seven - Pondicherry Circa 1927 – 1947
Man the Enigma
A deep enigma is the soul of man.
His conscious life obeys the Inconscient’s rule,
His need of joy is learned in sorrow’s school,
5His heart is a chaos and an empyrean.
His subtle Ignorance borrows Wisdom’s plan;
His mind is the Infinite’s sharp and narrow tool.
He wades through mud to reach the Wonderful,
And does what Matter must or Spirit can.
10All powers in his living’s soil take root
And claim from him their place and struggling right:
His ignorant creature mind crawling towards light
Is Nature’s fool and Godhead’s candidate,
A demigod and a demon and a brute,
15The slave and the creator of his fate.
The Infinitesimal Infinite
Out of a still immensity we came.
These million universes were to it
The poor light-bubbles of a trivial game,
20A fragile glimmer in the Infinite.
It could not find its soul in all that Vast:
It drew itself into a little speck
Infinitesimal, ignobly cast
Out of earth’s mud and slime strangely awake, —
25A tiny plasm upon a casual globe
In the small system of a dwarflike sun,
A little life wearing the flesh for robe,
A little mind winged through wide space to run.
It lived, it knew, it saw its self sublime,
30Deathless, outmeasuring Space, outlasting Time.