And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go,
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.[1]
When he thinks of immortality, he, the proud in spirit, prays:
Give me O God to sing that thought,
Give me, give him or her I love this quenchless faith,
In Thy ensemble, whatever else withheld withhold not from us,
Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and Space,
Health, peace, salvation universal.[2]
Like the mystics, he aspires to union with God:
Bathe me O God in thee, mounting to thee,
I and my soul to range in range of thee.[3]
And the hymn to divinity bursts forth thus from the love of his soul:
O Thou transcendent,
Nameless, the fibre and the breath,
Light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou centre of them,
Thou mightier centre of the true, the good, the loving,
Thou moral, spiritual fountain—affection’s source, thou reservoir …
Thou pulse—thou motive of the stars, suns, systems,
That, circling, move in order, safe, harmonious,
Athwart the shapeless vastnesses of space,
How should I think, how breathe a single breath, how speak, if, out of myself,
I could not launch, to those, superior universes?[4]
