A PARADOXICAL ODE 243 



Since all the tools for my untying 



In four-dimensioned space are lying 1 , 



Where playful fancy intersperses 



Whole avenues of universes 2 , 



Where Klein and Clifford fill the void 

 With one unbounded, finite homoloid, 

 Whereby the infinite is hopelessly destroyed. 



II. 



But when thy Science lifts her pinions 



In Speculation's wild dominions 

 I treasure every dictum thou emittest; 



While down the stream of Evolution 



We drift, and look for no solution 

 But that of the survival of the fittest. 



Till in that twilight of the gods 



When earth and sun are frozen clods, 



When, all its energy degraded, 



Matter in aether shall have faded, 



We, that is, all the work we've done- 

 As waves in aether, shall for ever run 

 In swift expanding spheres, through heavens beyond the sun'. 



III. 



Great Principle of all we see 



Thou endless Continuity* 

 By thee are all our angles gently rounded ; 



Our misfits are by thee adjusted, 



And as I still in thee have trusted, 

 So let my methods never be confounded ! 



O never may direct Creation 



Break in upon my contemplation 



Still may the causal chain ascending, 



Appear unbroken and unending, 



And where that chain is lost to sight, 

 Let viewless fancies guide my darkling flight 

 Through Aeon-haunted worlds, in order infinite. 



1 A tri-dimensional knot cannot exist in four-dimensional space. 



2 See The Unseen Universe, 4th edit., 220. 



3 See The Unseen Universe, 196. 



4 See The Unseen Universe, Chapter 11. 



