Seemeth but a sluggish ebb, of sinking soul and body?
Mind dwelling, long-time, sensual in the chambers of the flesh,
May slumber on in conscious sloth, and wilfully be dulled:
But is it therefore nigh to dissolution, even as the body of this death?
Ask the stricken conscience, gasping out its terrors;
Ask the dying miser, loth to leave his gold;
Ask the widowed poor, confiding her fatherless to strangers;
Ask the martyr-maid, a broken reed so strong,
That weak and tortured frame, with triumph on its brow!—
O thou gainsayer, the finger of disease may seem to reach the soul,