The Higher Pantheism in a Nutshell

Swinburne, Algernon Charles (1837 - 1909)

Original Text

Swinburne's Collected Poetical Works, 2 vols. (London: William Heinemann, 1924): II, 787-88.

1One, who is not, we see: but one, whom we see not, is:

2Surely this is not that: but that is assuredly this.

3What, and wherefore, and whence? for under is over and under:

4If thunder could be without lightning, lightning could be without thunder.

5Doubt is faith in the main: but faith, on the whole, is doubt:

6We cannot believe by proof: but could we believe without?

7Why, and whither, and how? for barley and rye are not clover:

8Neither are straight lines curves: yet over is under and over.

9Two and two may be four: but four and four are not eight:

10Fate and God may be twain: but God is the same thing as fate.

11Ask a man what he thinks, and get from a man what he feels:

12God, once caught in the fact, shows you a fair pair of heels.

13Body and spirit are twins: God only knows which is which:

14The soul squats down in the flesh, like a tinker drunk in a ditch.

15More is the whole than a part: but half is more than the whole:

16Clearly, the soul is the body: but is not the body the soul?

17One and two are not one: but one and nothing is two:

18Truth can hardly be false, if falsehood cannot be true.

19Once the mastodon was: pterodactyls were common as cocks:

20Then the mammoth was God: now is He a prize ox.

21Parallels all things are: yet many of these are askew:

22You are certainly I: but certainly I am not you.

23Springs the rock from the plain, shoots the stream from the rock:

24Cocks exist for the hen: but hens exist for the cock.

25God, whom we see not, is: and God, who is not, we see:

26Fiddle, we know, is diddle: and diddle, we take it, is dee.

Notes

1] The poem is a parody of Tennyson's "The Higher Pantheism." Swinburne writes in a letter of January 15, 1870: "I looked at Tennyson's `Higher Pantheism' again -- not bad verse altogether, but what gabble and babble of half-hatched thoughts in half-baked words! and wrote at the tail of this summary of his theology:

`God, whom we see not, is; and God, who is not, we see:
Fiddle, we know, is diddle: and diddle is possibly dee.'

I think it is terse and accurate as a Tennysonian compendium." (The Complete Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne, ed. Sir Edmund Gosse and Thomas James Wise [London: William Heinemann, 1926]: II, 86). Back to Line

Publication Start Year

1880

Publication Notes

Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Heptalogia; or, The Seven against Sense: A Cap with Seven Bells ... (London: Chatto and Windus, 1880): 1-6. end S956 H46 1880 Fisher Rare Book Library (Toronto)

RPO poem Editors

P. F. Morgan

RPO Edition

3RP 3.399.

Form

couplets