Something in me gasped for life, and lay still.

I was but a little body, and Life Universal had suddenly burst upon me.
For a moment I had my little hand on the Great Pulse, but my fingers slipped, empty.

For the space of a wild heartbeat I _knew_, and then I was again a simple child, looking to my earthly senses for life.

But the sky had stretched for me, the earth had expanded; a greater life had dawned in me.
We are not born all at once, but by bits.

The body first and the spirit later; and the birth and growth of the spirit, in those who are attentive to their own inner life, are slow and exceedingly painful.
Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth; we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth.