Out of a still immensity we came.
These million universes were to it
The poor light-bubbles of a trivial game,
A fragile glimmer in the Infinite.
It could not find its soul in all that Vast:
It drew itself into a little speck
Infinitesimal, ignobly cast
Out of earth’s mud and slime strangely awake, —
A tiny plasm upon a casual globe
In the small system of a dwarflike sun,
A little life wearing the flesh for robe,
A little mind winged through wide space to run.
It lived, it knew, it saw its self sublime,
Deathless, outmeasuring Space, outlasting Time.
Notes on Text
Circa 1934. This sonnet and two others were published in Sri Aurobindo Circle, Bombay, in 1948. Three handwritten and four typed drafts of this sonnet precede the Circle publication.