Jim and the Universe

Yes, all men knew who talked with him,
The universe was bothering Jim.

He looked through many books to find
For what the cosmos was designed,
How it was made when time begun,
And what ‘twas good for when ‘twas done.
Through old black-letter scrolls he waded.
The schoolmen’s folios he invaded,
Through many tomes of thought he went,
To find out what the whole thing meant.
He yearned to find out what it was,
The cause behind the final cause ;
He longed to get his fingers on
The Ding an sich, the noumenon ;
He wished to be equipped to say
What we are here for, anyway.
Just what the cosmos is about,
And learn the things you can’t find out.
And all men knew who talked with him,
The universe was bothering Jim.

He read the old Ionian sages,
And spent nine days upon two pages ;
And he devoured — a ten years’ feast —
The occult wisdom of the East ;
He read cuneiform inscriptions,
And hieroglyphs of old Egyptians,
To see if he could find some mention
Of nature’s unrevealed intention.
And all men knew who talked with him,
The universe was bothering Jim.

And long and earnest did he pant
Through terminology of Kant,
And with black-livered Schopenhauer
He wept his pessimistic shower.
And modified Pope’s hopeful song.
And said, “ Whatever is, is wrong.”
Through soundless seas of Dutch verbosity,
Through deeps of wide voluminosity.
His onward way grew dark and darker.
Through Sc helling, Bohm, and Schleiermacher,
Through Herbart, Hegel, and Jacobi :
No Teuton did he give the “ go-by,”
But still the universe was dim.
Opaque and unexplained to Jim.

Of Hobbs and Hume he took his smatter,
And found that there was naught but matter ;
And then to Berkeley he inclined,
And found that there was naught but mind j
And then his mental gear grew twisted,
He doubted if himself existed.
And then on Spencer’s books he fell
And studied “ the unknowable,”
And agonized with many a groan
Because it still remained unknown.
Still all men saw who talked with him,
The universe was bothering Jim.

Weighed down with metaphysic doubt,
Jim in his orchard wandered out ;
The blooms had drank the wine of May
And quaffed the freshness of the day ;
The fragrance that the west winds blew
Showed the stale earth was good as new ;
Beneath a tree down settled Jim,
And let the spring soak into him.
And the glad spring soaked into him,

While pink blooms dropped from every limb;
And then old nature’s bookless lore
Did Jim imbibe through every pore,
And wisdom’s higher truth did win
By an absorption through his skin.
For he who wants ambrosial fare —
Let him go out and eat the air
When blossom-drunken wild bees boom
Through deeps of perfumed apple-bloom.
There is a dust in library nooks
Blown from the musty leaves of books,
That blinds the lean scholastic’s eyes,
And makes him learnedly unwise.
Would you be wise, go out-of-doors,
And just intuit through the pores ;
For these white blooms and these blue skies
Were sent to make dull bookmen wise.

So while he drank the vernal day,
Jim lost his cosmical dismay,
Forgot his metaphysic mist,

And felt ‘twas glorious to exist ;
The sun baked in through Jim’s hard skull
A glad sense of the beautiful.
He felt, while apple-blossoms fell,
The universe was fairly well.
And, though it couldn’t be understood,
Upon the whole ‘twas mainly good.
“I’ve found, beneath this apple-tree.
The Cosmos is all right,” said he.

Sam Walter Foss

Elliot Homestead and Milkway, 4UR Ranch