| Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917. |
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| 217. La Vie Profonde |
| By Edmond Gore Alexander Holmes (1850–1906) |
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| HEMMED in by petty thoughts and petty things, | |
| Intent on toys and trifles all my years, | |
| Pleased by life’s gauds, pained by its pricks and stings, | |
| Swayed by ignoble hopes, ignoble fears; | |
| Threading life’s tangled maze without life’s clue, | 5 |
| Busy with means, yet heedless of their ends, | |
| Lost to all sense of what is real and true, | |
| Blind to the goal to which all Nature tends:— | |
| Such is my surface self: but deep beneath, | |
| A mighty actor on a world-wide stage, | 10 |
| Crowned with all knowledge, lord of life and death, | |
| Sure of my aim, sure of my heritage,— | |
| I—the true self—live on, in self’s despite, | |
| That ‘life profound’ whose darkness is God’s light. | |
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