“To furnish or not to furnish…that’s the question!” –
his first thought after minding out abyss,
the event that took up his very first session
some million cantos before heaven, earth, or Dis.
“It’s bare, but what is emptiness to me?
These particulars with which my thought is teeming…
If I let them out, they’ll imagine themselves free,
fashion themselves things of their own seeming.
Then, as I attempt a Sabbath amid the scene,
they’ll proportion out nothingness with grid and screen
and have the whole shebang churched and templed.
That’s, of course, if I decide not to intervene.
And long before the myriads have assembled
they’ll probably have thought up some grand speech
and have etched it, chapter and verse, into the breach!”
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