In this my form! forsake its quiet, true
And fruitfullest retirement, to go through
The heat, the strain, the languor and the wound!
Forget soft rain to hear the stormier sound,—
Exchange for burning tears its peaceful dew!
Again one has the applied illustration both of the pains and requitals that cling about the sod in its “strange estate of flesh,” in these lines declaring that
Some dust of Eden eddies round us yet.
Some clay o’ the Garden, clinging in the breast,
Down near the heart yet bides unmanifest.
Last eve in gardens strange to me I let