Figure C14 EINSTEIN

All spinning like a jewelled orrery:

But Mercury precessing, year to year,

Abrogates NEWTON’S laws, and presently

We see his clockwork cosmos decohere.

Time slips, becoming relative: we fear

The loss of rugged mechanism’s clasp.

But now we sense a burning hypersphere,

Spinoza’s geometric God: we gasp

At fleeting visions that our minds can barely grasp.