The Cosmic Spirit

I am a single Self all Nature fills.
Immeasurable, unmoved the Witness sits:
He is the silence brooding on her hills,
The circling motion of her cosmic mights.

I have broken the limits of embodied mind
And am no more the figure of a soul.
The burning galaxies are in me outlined;
The universe is my stupendous whole.

My life is the life of village and continent,
I am earth’s agony and her throbs of bliss;
I share all creatures’ sorrow and content
And feel the passage of every stab and kiss.

Impassive, I bear each act and thought and mood:
Time traverses my hushed infinitude.

Notes on Text
15 October 1939, revised 5 November. Two handwritten manuscripts, the first entitled “Cosmic Consciousness”, revised to “Cosmic Self”.