We too should make ourselves empty, that the great soul of the universe may fill us with its breath.

Binyon’s sentence uses a spiritual metaphor of “emptiness” as a prerequisite for receptivity. To “make ourselves empty” suggests setting aside ego, preconceptions, and self-assertion—an inward clearing that allows something larger than the individual to be experienced. The “great soul of the universe” evokes a quasi-mystical or pantheistic presence (nature, the divine, or a universal spirit) imagined as breathing life into the receptive person. The line thus commends humility and self-forgetfulness as conditions for inspiration, insight, or moral renewal: one becomes most fully alive not by self-amplification but by becoming a vessel for a greater animating force.