He Lifts Himself To Be a Conscious God

Savitri: Book 3 Canto 4 Section 1 Illumining breath to think and plasm to feel, He labours with his slow and sceptic brain Helped by the reason’s vacillating fires, To make his thought and will a magic door For knowledge to enter the darkness of the world And love to rule a realm of strife and hate. A mind impotent to reconcile heaven and earth And tied to Matter with a thousand bonds, He lifts himself to be a conscious god. Even when a glory of wisdom crowns his brow, When mind and spirit shed a grandiose ray To exalt this product of the sperm and gene, This alchemist’s miracle from plasm and gas, And he who shared the animal’s run and crawl Lifts his thought-stature to the Immortal’s heights, His life still keeps the human middle way; His body he resigns to death and pain, Abandoning Matter, his too heavy charge. A thaumaturge sceptic of miracles, A spirit left sterile of its occult power By an unbelieving brain and credulous heart, He leaves the world to end where it began: His work unfinished he claims a heavenly prize. Thus has he missed creation’s absolute. Half-way he stops his star of destiny: A vast and vain long-tried experiment, An ill-served high conception doubtfully done, The world’s life falters on not seeing its goal,— A zigzag towards unknown dangerous ground Ever repeating its habitual walk, Ever retreating after marches long And hardiest victories without sure result, Drawn endlessly an inconclusive game.