| Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917. |
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| 164. The Vanishing Point |
| By John Addington Symonds (1840–1893) |
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| THERE are who, when the bat on wing transverse | |
| Skims the swart surface of some neighbouring mere, | |
| Catch that thin cry too fine for common ear: | |
| Thus the last joy-note of the universe | |
| Is borne to those few listeners who immerse | 5 |
| Their intellectual hearing in no clear | |
| Paean, but pierce it with the thin-edged spear | |
| Of utmost beauty which contains a curse. | |
| Dead on their sense fall marches hymeneal, | |
| Triumphal odes, hymns, symphonies sonorous; | 10 |
| They crave one shrill vibration, tense, ideal, | |
| Transcending and surpassing the world’s chorus; | |
| Keen, fine, ethereal, exquisitely real, | |
| Intangible as star’s light quivering o’er us. | |
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