Who shall imagine Immortality, or picture its illimitable prospect? How feebly can a faltering tongue express the vast idea! For consider the primæval woods that bristle over broad Australia, And count their autumn leaves, millions multiplied by millions; Thence look up to a moonless sky from a sleeping isle of the Ægæan, And add to these leaves yon starry host, sparkling on the midnight numberless; Thence traverse an Arabia, some continent of eddying sand, Gather each grain, let none escape, add them to the leaves and to the stars; Afterward gaze upon the sea, the thousand leagues of an Atlantic, Take drop by drop, and add their sum, to the grains, and leaves, and stars; The drops of ocean, the desert sands, the leaves, and stars innumerable, (Albeit, in that multitude of multitudes, each small unit were an age,) All might reckon for an instant, a transient flash of Time, Compared with this intolerable blaze, the measureless enduring of Eternity! O grandest gift of the Creator,--O largess worthy of a God,-- Who shall grasp that thrilling thought, life and joy for ever? For the sun in heaven's heaven is Love that cannot change, And the shining of that sun is life, to all beneath its beams: Who shall arrest it in the firmament,--or drag it from its sphere? Or bid its beauty smile no more, but be extinct for ever? Yea, where God hath given, none shall take away, Nor build up limits to His love, nor bid His bounty cease; Wide, as space is peopled, endless as the empire of heaven, The river of the water of life floweth on in majesty for ever! Why should it seem a thing impossible to thee, O man of many doubts, That God shall wake the dead, and give this mortal immortality? Is it that such riches are unsearchable, the bounty too profuse? And yet, what gift, to cease or change, is worthy of the King Almighty? For remember the moment thou art not, thou mightest as well not have been; A millennium and an hour are equal in the gulph of that desolate abyss, annihilation: If Adam had existed till to-day, and to-day had perished utterly, What were his gain in length of a life, that hath passed away for ever? No tribute of thanks can exhale from the empty censer of nonentity; The Giver, with His gift reclaimed, is mulcted of all praise. Tell me, ye that strive in vain to cramp and dwarf the soul, Wherefore should it cease to be, and when shall essence die? It is,--and therefore shall be, till just obstacle opposeth: Show no cause for change, and reason leaneth to continuance. The body verily shall change; this curious house we live in Never had continuing stay, but changeth every instant: But the spiritual tenant of the house abideth in unalterable consciousness, He may fly to many lands, but cannot flee himself. The soil wherein ye drop the seed, by suns or rains may vary; But the seed is the same; and soul is the seed; and flesh but its anchorage to earth.