The universe, I’m learning, is informed
By energy, intelligent and wise,
Its frigid, vast and ghastly reaches warmed
By something I’ve been slow to recognize.
Though some poetically personify
This source of order as a loving God
They worship like an ancient king on high,
Beneath whom each is but a lowly clod,
I rather find that this intelligence
Implicitly invests the universe
With orderly direction we can sense
Or else ignore—in which case things go worse.
It’s like this poem, whose pattern underlies
What seems spontaneous—form in disguise.
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