All ceased, and I was not,
Leaving my cares and shame
Among the lilies, and forgetting them.”
Best of all, perhaps, Jalāluddin Rūmi:
“In a place beyond uttermost place, in a tract without shadow of trace,
Soul and body transcending I live, in the soul of my loved one anew.”
Sometimes the two aspects, personal and impersonal, are woven together by the poet: and then it is that we come nearest to an understanding of the full experience he is trying to express. A remarkable example of this occurs in Gerard Hopkins, perhaps the greatest mystical poet of the Victorian era:
“Thou mastering me
God! giver of breath and bread;
World’s strand, sway of the sea;