Flame of God

This bodily appearance is not all;
The form deceives, the person is a mask;
Hid deep in man celestial powers can dwell.

His fragile ship conveys through the sea of years
An incognito of the Imperishable.

A spirit that is a flame of God abides,
A fiery portion of the Wonderful,
Artist of his own beauty and delight,
Immortal in our mortal poverty.

This sculptor of the forms of the Infinite,
This screened unrecognised Inhabitant,
Initiate of his own veiled mysteries,
Hides in a small dumb seed his cosmic thought.

In the mute strength of the occult Idea
Determining predestined shape and act,
Passenger from life to life, from scale to scale,
Changing his imaged self from form to form,
He regards the icon growing by his gaze
And in the worm foresees the coming god.

At last the traveller in the paths of Time
Arrives on the frontiers of eternity.

In the transient symbol of humanity draped,
He feels his substance of undying self
And loses his kinship to mortality.

Savitri: Book One Canto 3