We drink the same streams and see the same sun, and we run the same course our fathers have run

A Prism is something solid that breaks up incoming light into lights of different colors. What seems present in the "event" changes. What comes in takes a turn and comes out much more. That definition offers a lot of ways to use the word Prism as a metaphor for events one experiences in daily life. "All events have a spiritual meaning" if one views life as a prism that uses all ones experiences as incoming light. The light that results might be referred to as that spiritual meaning or a better way to understand the purpose of the events.

Lincoln's last speech proved a Prism in several ways. As much as it was a message to both sides of the war then over it was for him a strained effort to see the light of God.

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Lincoln had a favorite poem that he found in a newspaper in 1846 that he was drawn to. The poem was called "Mortality"

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Mortality

So the multitude goes, like the flower or the weed,

That withers away to let others succeed

So the multitude comes, even those we behold,

To repeat every tale that has often been told.

For we are the same, our fathers have been,

We see the same sights our fathers have seen;

We drink the same streams and see the same sun

And run the same course of fathers have run.

They loved; but the story we cannot unfold;

They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold;

They grieved, but no wail from their slumbers will come,

They joyed, but the tongue of their gladness is dumb.

They died! Aye, they died; we things that are now;

That work on the turf that lies on their brow,

And make in their dwellings a transient abode,

Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage road.

Yea! Hope and despondency, pleasure and pain,

Are mingled together in sun-shine and rain;

And the smile and the tear, and the song and the dirge,

Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.

Tis the wink of an eye, this this draught of a breath

From the blossoms of health, to the paleness of death

From the gilded saloon, to the brier and the shroud

Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud