With a communicated quietude Of spirit--which into their gesture passed Making it seem habitual, no surprise, Scarce sorrow, hinted, perturbation none, But reverence and love ineffable-- Not speaking, Ruth and Rachel decently Composed the body to a look of rest In sleep on the sweet earth, the stainless sky Bending in benediction over her And the bright sun just risen touching the face To an auroral beauty with his beams.
"She has gone hence," Paul said, "to be with Christ, Which is far better. See the peace expressed In the unmoving hands on the stilled heart, The form relapsed oblivious on the ground, And the face fixed in transport of repose! Surpassing beauty! But corruptible; Faint image of the beauty which shall be When this seed planted springs in heavenly bloom And mortal takes on immortality! Think when we sow this beauty in the dust, That which we sow is earthly though so fair; But that will be celestial which shall hence In the bright resurrection season spring.
"Ye know that when the husbandman entrusts His seed-grain to the soil he does not sow That body which shall be, but kernels bare To which God gives a body as He will; From the wheat sown there springs a blade of green Unlike the wheat and far more beautiful. So is the resurrection that awaits Mary, our sister; this corruptible Will put on incorruption in that day, And Christ will fashion it anew more fair, After the body of His glory changed!
"Ye do not ask, but some have doubting asked, 'How are the dead raised up, and in what form Of body do they come?' Not surely such As they within the tomb were laid away. There sleeps a natural body in the dust; There wakes a spiritual body purified From every imperfection of the flesh. Whatever glorious beauty here was worn Is worn a changed more glorious beauty there.
"His proper glory to the sun belongs, And the moon has her glory, and the stars Each in his own peculiar glory shines: The body of the resurrection so Has its enduements proper to itself, Capacities, adjustments, attributes, Other than we know here--though shadowed forth Obscurely in the body that the Lord After His resurrection wore--such high Transfigurations of the faculties Belonging to the body of this flesh As man's imagination cannot dream!