“I wait
Till from my veiled brows shall fall,
This being’s thrall,
Which keeps me now from knowing all.
In stormless mornings yet to be,
I’ll pluck from Life’s full-fruited tree
The joys today denied to me.”
In every man there are two men. There is an outer man that people can see; there is an inner man that no human eye can see. The outer man may be hurt, wounded, marred, and even destroyed, while the inner man remains an untouched, unharmed, and immortal. St. Paul puts it thus: “Though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day.” He is referring to his own sufferings as a Christian. His body was hurt by scourgings, by stonings, by exposure. It was worn by toil, and by endurance of hunger, of hardship. But these things which scarred his body, leaving marks upon it, making it prematurely old, had no effect on the inner man. His real life was not wounded by persecution. It even grew in strength and beauty as the outer man decayed.
There is quenchless life within our decaying life. The beating heart, the breathing lungs, the wonderful mechanism of the body, do not make up the real life. There is something in us which thinks, feels, imagines, wills, chooses, and loves. The poet lies dead. His hand will write no more. But it was not the poet’s body that gave to the world the wonderful thoughts which have so wrought themselves into the world’s life. The hand now folded shaped the lines, but the marvelous power which inspired the thoughts in the lines was not in the hand. The hand will soon moulder in the dust, but the poet is immortal. The outward man has perished; but the inner life is beyond the reach of decay, safe in its immortality.
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