110
Whose ulcered soul can know no human help
Shrink from the best Physician's certain aid?
Oh it were better far to lay me down
Here on this cold damp earth, till some wild beast
Seize on his willing victim!
If to die
Were all, it were most sweet to rest my head
On the cold clod, and sleep the sleep of Death.
But if the Archangel's trump at the last hour
Startle the ear of Death and wake the soul
To frenzy!—dreams of infancy: fit tales
For garrulous beldames to affrighten babes!
I have been guilty, yet my mind can bear
The retrospect of guilt, yet in the hour
Of deep contrition to The Eternal look
For mercy! for the child of Poverty,
And "disinherited of happiness,"
What if I warr'd upon the world? the world
Had wrong'd me first: I had endured the ills
Of hard injustice; all this goodly earth
Shrink from the best Physician's certain aid?
Oh it were better far to lay me down
Here on this cold damp earth, till some wild beast
Seize on his willing victim!
If to die
Were all, it were most sweet to rest my head
On the cold clod, and sleep the sleep of Death.
But if the Archangel's trump at the last hour
Startle the ear of Death and wake the soul
To frenzy!—dreams of infancy: fit tales
For garrulous beldames to affrighten babes!
I have been guilty, yet my mind can bear
The retrospect of guilt, yet in the hour
Of deep contrition to The Eternal look
For mercy! for the child of Poverty,
And "disinherited of happiness,"
What if I warr'd upon the world? the world
Had wrong'd me first: I had endured the ills
Of hard injustice; all this goodly earth
