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Home  »  The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse  »  165. The Prism of Life

Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917.

John Addington Symonds (1840–1893)

165. The Prism of Life

ALL that began with God, in God must end:

All lives are garnered in His final bliss:

All wills hereafter shall be one with His:

When in the sea we sought, our spirits blend.

Rays of pure light, which one frail prism may rend

Into conflicting colours, meet and kiss

With manifold attraction, yet still miss

Contentment, while their kindred hues contend.

Break but that three-edged glass:—inviolate

The sundered beams resume their primal state,

Weaving pure light in flawless harmony.

Thus decomposed, subject to love and strife,

God’s thought, made conscious through man’s mortal life,

Resumes through death the eternal unity.