I Grant You Ample Leave / George Eliot

"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?--"