George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)

Here you will find thePoemI Grant You Ample Leaveof poet George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)

I Grant You Ample Leave

"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? --"