The Secret of the Universe



AN ODE
(By a Western Spinning Dervish)

I SPIN, I spin, around, around,  
 And close my eyes,  
 And let the bile arise  
From the sacred region of the soul’s 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 world’s 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 man’s 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 God’s Infinity,  
 Spin, spin, spin, spin.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:21 min read
66

Quick analysis:

Scheme AX BCCBDXXDDDXAXXCCXXXEEFFGHHGIIJIJIKKLLMMLALM
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,612
Words 270
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 2, 43

Edward Dowden

Edward Dowden, was an Irish critic and poet. more…

All Edward Dowden poems | Edward Dowden Books

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