Grows callous, and insensible to pain,

All cicatrized, it hardens with the blow

Which lays its fairest hopes and prospects low;

But softer grows the heart whose wounds are heal’d

By Gilead’s balm, sweet cure from Heaven reveal’d.

If purest joys must from affliction spring,

Then welcome grief, and lonely sorrowing!

A few brief years at most shall pass, before

Sorrow shall cease, and grief shall be no more.

I would not always live this dying life,