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