Many years my house and my garment of change;
I am the bird, and this body was my cage,
I have wing’d my flight elsewhere, and left it for a token.
I am the pearl, and this my shell,
Broken open and abandon’d to worthlessness;
I am the treasure, and this was a spell
Thrown over me, till the treasure was released in truth.
Thanks be to God, who has delivered me,
And has assign’d me a lasting abode in the highest.
There am I now the day conversing with the happy,