Author: Isaac Watts Appears in 9 hymnals First Line: How meanly dwells th’immortal mind! Lyrics:
1 How meanly dwells th’immortal mind!
How vile these bodies are!
Why was a clod of earth designed
T’enclose a heavenly star?
2 Weak cottage, where our souls reside!
This flesh a tottering wall;
With frightful breaches, gaping wide,
The building bends to fall.
3 All round it storms of trouble blow,
And waves of sorrow roll;
Cold waves and winter storms beat through,
And pain the tenant-soul.
4 "Alas! how frail our state!" said I:
And thus went mourning on,
Till, sudden from the clearing sky,
A gleam of glory shone.
5 My soul all felt the glory come,
And breathed her native air;
Then she remembered Heaven her home,
And she a prisoner here.
6 Straight she began to change her key,
And joyful in her pains,
She sung the frailty of her clay
In pleasurable strains.
7 “How weak the prison where I dwell!
Flesh, but a tottering wall,
The breaches cheerfully foretell,
The house must shortly fall.
8 “No more, my friends, shall I complain,
Though all my heart-strings ache;
Welcome, disease, and every pain,
That makes the cottage shake.
9 “Now let the tempest blow all round,
Now swell the surges high,
And beat this house of bondage down,
To let the stranger fly.
10 “I have a mansion built above,
By the eternal hand;
And should the earth’s old basis move,
My heav’nly house must stand.
11 "Yes, for ’tis there my Savior reigns,
(I long to see the God)
And His immortal strength sustains
The courts that cost Him blood."
12 Hark, from on high my Savior calls;
"I come, my Lord, my love."
Devotion breaks the prison walls,
And speeds my last remove.
Used With Tune: CORONATION Text Sources: Horae Lyricae and Divine Songs
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