A vast surrender was his only strength

Savitri: Book 3 Canto 2 Section 3 This was a seed cast into endless Time. A Word is spoken or a Light is shown, A moment sees, the ages toil to express. So flashing out of the Timeless leaped the worlds; An eternal instant is the cause of the years. All he had done was to prepare a field; His small beginnings asked for a mighty end: For all that he had been must now new-shape In him her joy to embody, to enshrine Her beauty and greatness in his house of life. But now his being was too wide for self; His heart’s demand had grown immeasurable: His single freedom could not satisfy, Her light, her bliss he asked for earth and men. But vain are human power and human love To break earth’s seal of ignorance and death; His nature’s might seemed now an infant’s grasp; Heaven is too high for outstretched hands to seize. This Light comes not by struggle or by thought; In the mind’s silence the Transcendent acts And the hushed heart hears the unuttered Word. A vast surrender was his only strength. A Power that lives upon the heights must act, Bring into life’s closed room the Immortal’s air And fill the finite with the Infinite. All that denies must be torn out and slain And crushed the many longings for whose sake We lose the One for whom our lives were made. Now other claims had hushed in him their cry: Only he longed to draw her presence and power Into his heart and mind and breathing frame; Only he yearned to call for ever down Her healing touch of love and truth and joy Into the darkness of the suffering world. His soul was freed and given to her alone.