| Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916. | | | XVIII. The Great Mystery
The Thought of Death | | By John Addington Symonds (1840–1893) |
| | A PALINODE
NAY, Death, thou art a shadow! Even as light | |
| Is but the shadow of invisible God, | |
| And of that shade the shadow is thin Night, | |
| Veiling the earth whereon our feet have trod; | |
| So art Thou but the shadow of this life, | 5 |
| Itself the pale and unsubstantial shade | |
| Of living God, fulfilled by love and strife | |
| Throughout the universe Himself hath made: | |
| And as frail Night, following the flight of earth, | |
| Obscures the world we breathe in, for a while, | 10 |
| So Thou, the reflex of our mortal birth, | |
| Veilest the life wherein we weep and smile: | |
| But when both earth and life are whirl’d away, | |
| What shade can shroud us from God’s deathless day? | | | | |
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