The speaker begins by saying that a friend’s sickness has brought him a sobering thought. He pictures the illness as a set of scales. On one side, the whole world could burn down to a single coal; he asks why that loss should trouble him now that he has seen the world weighed against a soul. The implied answer is that the soul — this friend’s inward life and being — matters far more than the entire material world. The lines do not describe the illness or offer easy comfort. Instead, they record a shift in perspective. Faced with a friend’s suffering, the speaker finds the world suddenly smaller and a single human soul much larger. The mood is quiet and austere, almost whispered, with a hard-won stillness at its center.
A Friend's Illness — Summary
Sickness brought me this Thought, in that scale of his: Why should I be dismayed Though flame had burned the whole World, as it were a coal, Now I have seen it weighed Against a soul?