dots-menu
×

Home  »  The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse  »  99. All things are full of God

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

John Stuart Blackie (1809–1895)

99. All things are full of God

ALL things are full of God. Thus spoke

Wise Thales in the days

When subtle Greece to thought awoke

And soared in lofty ways.

And now what wisdom have we more?

No sage divining-rod

Hath taught than this a deeper lore,

ALL THINGS ARE FULL OF GOD.

The Light that gloweth in the sky

And shimmers in the sea,

That quivers in the painted fly

And gems the pictured lea,

The million hues of Heaven above

And Earth below are one,

And every lightful eye doth love

The primal light, the Sun.

Even so, all vital virtue flows

From life’s first fountain, God;

And he who feels, and he who knows,

Doth feel and know from God.

As fishes swim in briny sea,

As fowl do float in air,

From Thy embrace we cannot flee;

We breathe, and Thou art there.

Go, take thy glass, astronomer,

And all the girth survey

Of sphere harmonious linked to sphere,

In endless bright array.

All that far-reaching Science there

Can measure with her rod,

All powers, all laws, are but the fair

Embodied thoughts of God.