Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Ranolf and Amohia

X

page 44

X.

Then Schelling plies the metaphysic ball,
Which reason's racket-sill will strike aloft
To overfly sensation's bounding wall,
Though to the ground aft is fall.
Those two Ideas we prate about so oft,
The Soul—the Universe—are really two,
And are identified—O, not in you,
Nor any finite Consciousness so small.
But only in the Absolute—the All.
Spirit is Matter that it self surve;
And Matter, spirit' sundiscerning phase;
They are the magnet's two opposing poles
And each the other balances—controls:
Both in a centre of indifference rest,
Which their essential being is confest:
As in the magnet's every point—we see
In all the works of Nature just these three
But that which bounds them all and each degree.
The Absolute—the Magnet's self—must be,
Except at Being's most exalted height—
Impersonal—uncoscious—infinite;
For God—that Absolute—still strives in vain,
In Nature's blind inferior works: nor can
In any form Self-Consciousness attain.
Save in the highest reasoning power of Man,
That central point, which Soul and Nature gain;—
Unconscious else the Universal Pan,

Behold, then, three-and-twenty centuries passed,
The stately Ship of Western Thought at Last
page 45 Striking and stranded on the barren shore
Where struck that Buddhist bark so long before.
Left high and dry with all its phantom freight;
Thither impelled by that satiric fate
That dogs our intellectual pride, and brings
Shipwreck with its conviction shallow and vain,
That 'tis a storm charmed cruiser, this poor brain.
'Built, rigged, and manned to circumnavigate
The mighty round of all existing things.
So Schelling digs where Kásyapa had dug;
Magniloquent, yet microscopic elf, So makes all
Nature but the high-plumed hearse
Of God gone dead; so, whipping out his cord,
O metaphysical and monstrous Thug!
Strangles Creation's life out; in a word,
Finding the Universe within himself,
Leaves nought but Self within the Universe.

"Alas!" thought Ranolf, "were it wrong to call
This the most drear of metaphysic dreams—
The most revolting, mean result of all?
The Being, then, of highest worth it seems,
Which that World-ghost, that blind and senseless force
Evolves in its uncaused unconscious course,
Is but this inefficient soul of ours—
The one God, Man—for all his boasted powers
A clay-clad, wingless, weal; ephemeral,
A worm upon this earth-speck doomed to crawl.
Is he the sole Intelligence? can he
The crown and climax of all Being be
Throughout that million-starred immensity?
Prove it by demonstration flawless, strong;
The wild conclusion proves some premiss wrong;
page 46 Absurd, as if those dwellers by old Nile
Had, in mere Scarabeus-worship vile.
Crowned with a beetle their great Pyramid—
The Monarch Builder out of sight and hid."