Coleridge reflects on the changes age has brought to his body, saying, “When I was young?—Ah, woful When! / Ah! for the change ’twixt Now and Then! / This breathing house not built with hands,” which is an obvious allusion to 2 CORINTHIANS 5:1, where the Apostle Paul assures the believers at Corinth, and in all ages and places, that “if our earthly house, this tent (referring to our physical bodies), is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”
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