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"Oh! were such joys and
this vain world alone
The term of human hope - where, where would be
The victims of some tyranny unknown,
Who sank, still conscious that the mind was free?
They that have lain in dungeons years on years,
No voice to cheer their darkness, - they whose pain
Of horrid torture wrung forth blood with tears,
Murdered, perhaps, for some rapacious gain, -
They who have stood, bound to the martyr's stake,
While the sharp flames ate through the blistering skin, -
They that have bled for some high cause's sake, -
They that have perished for another's sin,
And from the scaffold to that God appealed
To whom the naked heart is all revealed,
Against the shortening of life's narrow span
By the blind rage and false decree of man?
And where obscurer sufferers - they who slept
And left no name on history's random page, -
But in God's book of reckoning, sternly kept,
Live on from year to year, from age to age?
The poor - the labouring poor! whose weary lives,
Through many a freezing night and hungry day,
Are a reproach to him who only strives
In luxury to waste his hours away, -
The patient poor! whose insufficient means
Make sickness dreadful, yet by whose low bed
Oft in meek prayer some fellow-sufferer leans,
And trusts in Heaven while destitute of bread;
The workhouse orphan, left without a friend;
Or weak forsaken child of want and sin,
Whose helpless life begins, as it must end,
By men disputing who shall take it in;
Who clothe, who aid that spark to linger here,
Which for mysterious purpose God hath given
To struggle through a day of toil and fear,
And meet him - with the proudest - up in heaven!
These were, and are not: - shall we therefore deem
That they have vanished like a sleeper's dream?
Or that one half creation is to know
Luxurious joy, and others only woe,
And so go down into the common tomb,
With none to question their unequal doom?
Shall we give credit to a thought so fond?
Ah! no - the world beyond - the world beyond!
There, shall the desolate heart regain its own!
There, the oppressed shall stand before God's throne!
There, when the tangled web is all explained,
Man's proud mistaken judgments and false scorn
Shall melt like mists before uprising morn,
And holy truth stand forth serenely bright,
In the rich flood of God's eternal light!
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