Savitri: Book 1, Canto 3, Section 2

As so he grew into his larger self,

Humanity framed his movements less and less;

A greater being saw a greater world.

A fearless will for knowledge dared to erase

The lines of safety Reason draws that bar

Mind’s soar, soul’s dive into the Infinite.

Even his first steps broke our small earth-bounds

And loitered in a vaster freer air.

In hands sustained by a transfiguring Might

He caught up lightly like a giant’s bow

Left slumbering in a sealed and secret cave

The powers that sleep unused in man within.

He made of miracle a normal act

And turned to a common part of divine works,

Magnificently natural at this height,

Efforts that would shatter the strength of mortal hearts,

Pursued in a royalty of mighty ease

Aims too sublime for Nature’s daily will:

The gifts of the spirit crowding came to him;

They were his life’s pattern and his privilege.

A pure perception lent its lucent joy:

Its intimate vision waited not to think;

It enveloped all Nature in a single glance,

It looked into the very self of things;

Deceived no more by form he saw the soul.

In beings it knew what lurked to them unknown;

It seized the idea in mind, the wish in the heart;

It plucked out from grey folds of secrecy

The motives which from their own sight men hide.

He felt the beating life in other men

Invade him with their happiness and their grief;

Their love, their anger, their unspoken hopes

Entered in currents or in pouring waves

Into the immobile ocean of his calm.

He heard the inspired sound of his own thoughts

Re-echoed in the vault of other minds;

The world’s thought-streams travelled into his ken;

His inner self grew near to others’ selves

And bore a kinship’s weight, a common tie,

Yet stood untouched, king of itself, alone.