What is the Awakening?

Sweet friends—what the women lave

For the last sleep of the grave,

Is a hut which I am quitting,

Is a garment no mere fitting,

Is a cage from which at last,

Like a bird, my soul hath passed.

Love the inmate, not the room,

The wearer, not the garb—the plume

Of eagle, not the bars

That kept him from those splendid stars.

—After Death in Arabia, Arnold

The Awakening