The New Universe

by John Davidson (1857 - 1909) (This is just a portion of Davidson's poem, The New Universe. Taken from "Poems Of John Davidson", The Modern Library, publisher: Boni and Liveright, c. 1924) You have been told for twenty centuries That that which is behind the Universe, Its maker, God, or some obscurant will, Transcends substantial things; and psychic powers, Imagination, thought-the essences Material of matter-have squandered craft Enough to make another Universe In building up nonentity, miscalled The world of spirit! There is no such world:I speak to minds of every calibre, And would be understood --no spirit world; No world but this, which is the Universe, The whole, great, everlasting Universe. And you are It -- you, there, that sweep the streets, You that make the music, you that make the laws, You that bear children, you that fade unloved. Oh, if there be one here despised and mean, Oppressed with self-contempt and cursed with fear, I say to him --Not anywhere at all Is there a greater being than you-just you: You are the lustre of a million sunsThe fuel of thelr fires, your flesh and blood; And all the orbs that strew eternal space Are less than you, for you can feel, can know, Can think, can comprehend the sum of things: You are the infinite Universe itself Become intelligent and capable. Grasp it and hold it in your heart of hearts, That nothing lies behind, nothing at all, Except the ether woven from bourne to bourneIf there be spatial bournes-continually Evolving lightning, chrysosperm of space, Electric lust for ever unconsumed, Twisexed fertility that begets and breeds The divers elements whereof we are, And all the suns and all the galaxies: Nothing of thought or oversoul behind, About, above; but you and I in front, The intellect, the passion and the dream,

The flower and perfume of the Universe. You have been told for twenty centuries That man upon a transient isthmus stands Between the oceans of eternity; And that the earth is but an academe Where the poor human acolyte prepares For joy in Heaven or penal fires of Hell, Or here begin consecutive rebirths That shall in other world's perfection gain. I say the earth itself is Heaven and Hell, That every heartbeat is the crack of doom, And every passing moment the judgment day! That here and now we have eternity. Time is not; never was: a juggling trick, A very simple one, of three tossed balls, The sun, the moon, the earth, to cheat our sense With day and night and seasons of the year. This is eternity: here once in space The Universe is conscious in you and me (the poem continues)