I Grant You Ample Leave

by George Eliot

　　To use the hoary formula 'I am'

　　Naming the emptiness where thought is not;

　　But fill the void with definition, 'I'

　　Will be no more a datum than the words

　　You link false inference with, the 'Since' & 'so'

　　That, true or not, make up the atom-whirl.

　　Resolve your 'Ego', it is all one web

　　With vibrant ether clotted into worlds:

　　Your subject, self, or self-assertive 'I'

　　Turns nought but object, melts to molecules,

　　Is stripped from naked Being with the rest

　　Of those rag-garments named the Universe.

　　Or if, in strife to keep your 'Ego' strong

　　You make it weaver of the etherial light,

　　Space, motion, solids & the dream of Time--

　　Why, still 'tis Being looking from the dark,

　　The core, the centre of your consciousness,

　　That notes your bubble-world: sense, pleasure, pain,

　　What are they but a shifting otherness,

　　Phantasmal flux of moments?--"

　　"I grant you ample leave

　　To use the hoary formula 'I am'

　　Naming the emptiness where thought is not;

　　But fill the void with definition, 'I'

　　Will be no more a datum than the words

　　You link false inference with, the 'Since' & 'so'

　　That, true or not, make up the atom-whirl.

　　Resolve your 'Ego', it is all one web

　　With vibrant ether clotted into worlds:

　　Your subject, self, or self-assertive 'I'

　　Turns nought but object, melts to molecules,

　　Is stripped from naked Being with the rest

　　Of those rag-garments named the Universe.

　　Or if, in strife to keep your 'Ego' strong

　　You make it weaver of the etherial light,

　　Space, motion, solids & the dream of Time--

　　Why, still 'tis Being looking from the dark,

　　The core, the centre of your consciousness,

　　That notes your bubble-world: sense, pleasure, pain,

　　What are they but a shifting otherness,

　　Phantasmal flux of moments?--"