Canto 48The Miracle of Birth
Book 16. Part Seven - Pondicherry Circa 1927 – 1947
Sonnets
The Little Ego
This puppet ego the World-Mother made,
This little profiteer of Nature’s works,
5Her trust in his life-tenancy betrayed,
Makes claim on claim, all debt to her he shirks.
Each movement of our life our ego fills;
Inwoven in each thread of being’s weft,
When most we vaunt our selflessness, it steals
10A sordid part; no corner void is left.
One way lies free, our heart and soul to give,
Our body and mind to Thee and every cell,
And steeped in Thy world-infinity to live.
Then lost in light, shall fade the ignoble spell.
15Nature, of her rebellion quit, shall be
A breath of the spirit’s vast serenity.
The Miracle of Birth
I saw my soul a traveller through Time;
From life to life the cosmic ways it trod,
20Obscure in the depths and on the heights sublime,
Evolving from the worm into the god.
A spark of the eternal Fire, it came
To build a house in Matter for the Unborn.
The inconscient sunless Night received the flame,
25In the brute seed of things dumb and forlorn
Life stirred and Thought outlined a gleaming shape
Till on the stark inanimate earth could move,
Born to somnambulist Nature in her sleep,
A thinking creature who can hope and love.
30Still by slow steps the miracle goes on,
The Immortal’s gradual birth mid mire and stone.