I Would Not Always Live

"So that my soul chooseth strangling; and death rather than my life. I loath it; I would not live always; let me alone; for my days are vanity. What is man, that thou shouldest magnify  him, and that thou shouldest set thy heart upon him?"  Job vii. 15, 17.

I WOULD NOT ALWAYS LIVE. There's something here,
In this lone world of sorrow and of sin,
To which the purer heart, to virtue dear,
Finds no response, no sympathy within.
As when the rising sun dispels the cloud,
And spreads its glory o'er the dazzled sky,
So shall the mind cast off its moral shroud,
And bask in brightness, when it mounts on high.
That is its home; its high congenial place;
'Tis there, that, fitted with unearthly wings,
The spirit, running its eternal race,
And mounting ever up, triumphant sings.
I would not always live.  Hail glorious day,
Which gives us heavenly life, and takes our house of clay.

— American Cottage Life (1850) XXXVI.