This body, we know it
From head to foot,
From heel to crown;
And sometimes we love it,
When days are fair;
And sometimes we hate it,
And sigh to bear
The stain on the soul
Of a lost control,
And account it a clog,
And a load of care
To keep us down.

But what if this body
Were but a sheath
For quickened bud?
And suppose that the life,
Thus hid from sight,
And preserved by it
From blast and blight,
Be just what we all
By the one name call
Of spirit, or soul?
But though named aright
Not understood;

And suppose that the bud
By an innate force
…Should slow unfold?
And compelled by a power
We term divine,
And cultured by weather
Of shade and shine,
Should assume the form
Which the sun and storm
Of what we call life
In this world, combine
To shape and mold?

Till at length the sheath
Can no more retain
The bursting bud,
But withered and useless
It drop away,
One body made perfect
As one decay;
Will it then appear
That while even here,
We fashioned a body
For some great day,
Then understood?

That body! what form
It shall henceforth take
Is past our ken,
But sometimes we can feel
Its pulses beat,
And we use even now
Its hands and feet,
The light of its eyes
On a smile oft lies;
But what it shall be
When all is complete,
Is kept till then.

Janet Steel Pattinson
Far-Ben, or Poems in
Many Moods, 1899