No hope fulfilled its promise; and no dream
Was ever worth its waking bitterness.
Then there was love, that crowding into one
All vanity, all sorrow, all remorse:
Till we loathe life, glad, beauteous, hoping life,
And would be fain to lay our burthen down,
Although we might but lay it in the grave,
All natural terror lost in hope of peace.
God of those stars, to which I once appealed
In a vain fantasy of sympathy,
How wretched I have been in my few years!
How have I wept throughout the sleepless nights
Then sank in heavy slumber, misery still
Haunting its visions: morning's cold gray light
Waked me reluctant, for though sleep had been
Anguish, yet I could say it was but sleep.
And then day came, with all those vanities
With which our nature mocks its wretchedness,
The toilsome pleasures, and the dull pursuits;
Efforts to fly ourselves, and made in vain.
Too soon I learnt the secret of our life,
That "vanity of vanities" is writ
Deep in the hidden soul of human things;
And then I sank into despondency,
And lived from habit, not from hope; and fear
Stood between me and death, and only fear;
I was a castaway: for, like the fool,
Within my soul I said there is no God.
But then a mighty and a glorious voice
c2
