I give the best of the two good poems I have mentioned, and very good it
is.
HAPPY FRAILTY.
"How meanly dwells the immortal mind!
How vile these bodies are!
Why was a clod of earth designed
To enclose a heavenly star?
"Weak cottage where our souls reside!
This flesh a tottering wall!
With frightful breaches gaping wide,
The building bends to fall.
"All round it storms of trouble blow,
And waves of sorrow roll;
Cold waves and winter storms beat through,
And pain the tenant-soul.
"Alas, how frail our state!" said I,
And thus went mourning on;
Till sudden from the cleaving sky
A gleam of glory shone.
My soul all felt the glory come,
And breathed her native air;
Then she remembered heaven her home,
And she a prisoner here.
Straight she began to change her key;
And, joyful in her pains,
She sang the frailty of her clay
In pleasurable strains.
"How weak the prison is where I dwell!
Flesh but a tottering wall!
The breaches cheerfully foretell
The house must shortly fall.
"No more, my friends, shall I complain,
Though all my heart-strings ache;
Welcome disease, and every pain
That makes the cottage shake!
"Now let the tempest blow all round,
Now swell the surges high,
And beat this house of bondage down
To let the stranger fly!
"I have a mansion built above
By the eternal hand;
And should the earth's old basis move,
My heavenly house must stand.
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