“‘Tell my friends, who behold me dead, Weeping and mourning my loss a while, Think not this corpse before you myself: That corpse is mine, but it is not I. I am an undying life, and this is not my body, Many years my house and my garment of change; I am the bird, and this body was my cage, I have wing’d my flight elsewhere, and left it for a token. I am the pearl, and this my shell, Broken open and abandon’d to worthlessness; I am the treasure, and this was a spell Thrown over me, till the treasure was released in truth. Thanks be to God, who has delivered me, And has assign’d me a lasting abode in the highest. There am I now the day conversing with the happy, And beholding face to face unveiled Deity; Contemplating the Mirror wherein I see and read Past and present, and whatever remains to be. Food and drink too are mine, yet both are one; Mystery known to him who is worthy to know. It is not “wine sweet of taste” that I drink; No, nor “water,” but the pure milk of a mother. Understand my meaning aright, for the secret Is signified by words of symbol and figure,— I have journey’d on, and left you behind; How could I make an abode of your halting-stage? Ruin then my house and break my cage in pieces, And let the shell go perish with kindred illusions; Tear my garment, the veil once thrown over me; Then bury all these, and leave them alike for I go. Deem not death death, for it is in truth Life of lives, the goal of all our longings. Think lovingly of a God whose Name is love, Who joys in rewarding, and come on secure of fear. Whence I am, I behold you undying spirits like myself, And see that our lot is one, and you as I.’”