d with the base alloy of earth
That prisons it within this narrow sphere?
Hath it not apprehension natural,
Attributive as immortality,
Unshackled by an organ that will die
Beneath the friction of a few short years?
O there is blindness on us in this life,
That seeth not the things which lie around,
E'en in the circuit of our littleness!
But death will loose the scales from off our eyes,
And smite our fleshly dwelling place in twain;
Freeing the spirit, till with joyous wings
It cleave the limits of immensity.
Yet _now_ the soul will shake its fetters off,
And yearn unto the freedom of the skies,
Like a poor bird whose life is liberty.

Yon star, methinks, must be a glorious world,
Where Nature hath a spiritual life
And bloometh on in Spring perpetual,
Unsatiating in its loveliness.
Verdure of herb and leafy plenitude
Spread o'er it like a vesture, and the glow
Of sunlit waters smiling from afar,
Half as in fancy, half reality.
The skies above it glassy and serene
As the reflection of its own repose,
And every new alternation of the light
Shedding new beauties on the scene below.
Thus far in fashion, kin to Earth as Time
Beareth the impress of Eternity,
But differing henceforth as the gentle dove
Doth from the vulture on its carrion:
The dwellers on this paradisal sphere
Methinks, must be of glorious lineament,
Clad with the brightness of eternal youth,
And buoyant with internal blessedness.
Spirits that shining with untarnished light,
Radiate, and make matter luminous,
Filling the eyes with sweet felicity,
And love, and peace, and all emotions pure.
No sorrow there to make the vision dim,
And wash the mellow ripeness from the cheek;
No guilty deed to brand the heart with shame,
And write its direful sentence on the brow;
No rankling venom struggling through the veins,
And blasting all the kindliness within,
Till like a torrent bursting o'er restraint,
It spread its desolation on mankind;
But a pure regnant holiness and love,
Directing impulse with most queenly sway
To ends of tenderness and charity;
A nature purified by fellowship
With angels and bright ministers of Heaven,
That wander thither from their homes above
On missions of benignity and grace.
And in this pleasaunce, as by holy need,
There reigneth deep communion of soul,
That frameth as it were one atmosphere
Of joy, and hop