THE SECRET OF THE UNIVERSE
by: Edward Dowden (1843-1913)
- SPIN, I spin, around, around,
- And close my eyes,
- And let the bile arise
- From the sacred region of the souls Profound;
- Then gaze upon the world; how strange! how new!
- The earth and heaven are one,
- The horizon-line is gone,
- The sky how green! the land how fair and blue!
- Perplexing items fade from my large view,
- And thought which vexed me with its false and true
- Is swallowed up in Intuition; this,
- This is the sole true mode
- Of reaching God,
- And gaining the universal synthesis
- Which makes All--One; while fools with peering eyes
- Dissect, divide, and vainly analyse.
- So round, and round, and round again!
- How the whole globe swells within my brain,
- The stars inside my lids appear,
- The murmur of the spheres I hear
- Throbbing and beating in each ear;
- Right in my navel I can feel
- The centre of the worlds great wheel.
- Ah peace divine, bliss dear and deep,
- No stay, no stop,
- Like any top
- Whirling with swiftest speed, I sleep.
- O ye devout ones round me coming,
- Listen! I think that I am humming;
- No utterance of the servile mind
- With poor chop-logic rules agreeing
- Here shall ye find,
- But inarticulate burr of mans unsundered being.
- Ah, could we but devise some plan,
- Some patent jack by which a man
- Might hold himself ever in harmony
- With the great whole, and spin perpetually,
- As all things spin
- Without, within,
- As Time spins off into Eternity,
- And Space into the inane Immensity,
- And the Finite into Gods Infinity,
- Spin, spin, spin, spin.
"The Secret of the Universe"
is reprinted from The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse.
Ed. Nicholson & Lee. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1917. |
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