George Eliot (1819-1880)
I Grant you Ample Leave
1"I grant you ample leave
2To use the hoary formula 'I am'
3Naming the emptiness where thought is not;
4But fill the void with definition, 'I'
5Will be no more a datum than the words
6You link false inference with, the 'Since' & 'so'
7That, true or not, make up the atom-whirl.
8Resolve your 'Ego', it is all one web
9With vibrant ether clotted into worlds:
10Your subject, self, or self-assertive 'I'
11Turns nought but object, melts to molecules,
12Is stripped from naked Being with the rest
13Of those rag-garments named the Universe.
14Or if, in strife to keep your 'Ego' strong
15You make it weaver of the etherial light,
16Space, motion, solids & the dream of Time --
17Why, still 'tis Being looking from the dark,
18The core, the centre of your consciousness,
19That notes your bubble-world: sense, pleasure, pain,
20What are they but a shifting otherness,
21Phantasmal flux of moments? --"
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: Bernard J. Paris, "George Eliot's
Unpublished Poetry," Studies in Philology 56 (1959): 544-45.
Yale University Library MS Vault, Eliot 7, p. 7.
First publication date:
1959
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: 2001
Recent editing: 1:2002/10/5
Rhyme: unrhyming
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