The poetical works of John and Charles Wesley

Ah lovely appearance of death!
No sight upon earth is so fair!
Not all the gay pageants that breathe,
Can with a dead body compare:
With solemn delight I survey
The corpse when the spirit is fled,
In love with the beautiful clay,
And longing to lie in its stead.

194

How bless'd is our brother, bereft
Of all that could burden his mind,
How easy the soul that hath left
This wearisome body behind!
Of evil incapable thou,
Whose relics with envy I see,
No longer in misery now,
No longer a sinner like me.

This earth is affected no more
With sickness, or shaken with pain;
The war in the members is o'er,
And never shall vex him again:
No anger henceforward, or shame,
Shall redden this innocent clay,
Extinct is the animal flame,
And passion is vanish'd away.

The languishing head is at rest,
Its thinking and aching are o'er;
The quiet immovable breast
Is heaved by affliction no more:
The heart is no longer the seat
Of trouble and torturing pain,
It ceases to flutter and beat,
It never shall flutter again.

The lids he so seldom could close,
By sorrow forbidden to sleep,
Seal'd up in eternal repose,
Have strangely forgotten to weep:
The fountains can yield no supplies,
These hollows from water are free;
The tears are all wiped from these eyes,
And evil they never shall see.

195

To mourn, and to suffer, is mine,
While bound in a prison I breathe,
And still for deliverance pine,
And press to the issues of death:
What now with my tears I bedew,
O might I this moment become,
My spirit created anew,
My flesh be consign'd to the tomb.

University of Virginia Library

HYMN V. ON THE SIGHT OF A CORPSE.