Draws near? Alas! its brief, its waning strength
Upward no more the fetters' weight can bear:
It falters,--pauses,--sinks; and, sunk at length,
Plucks at its chain in frenzy and despair.
Not forever fallen! Not in eternal prison!
No! hell with fire of pain
Melteth apart its chain;
Heaven doth once more constrain:
It hath arisen!
And never, never again, thus to fall low?
Ah, no!
Terror, Remorse, and Woe,
Vainly they pierced it through with many sorrows;
Hell shall regain it,--thousand times regain it;
But can detain it
Only awhile from ruthful Heaven's to-morrows.
That sin is suffering,
It knows,--it knows this thing;
And yet it courts the sting
That deeply pains it;
It knows that in the cup
The sweet is but a sup,
That Sorrow fills it up,
And who drinks drains it.
It knows; who runs may read.
But, when the fetters dazzle, heaven's far joy seems dim;
And 'tis not life but so to be inwound.
A little while, and then--behold it bleed
With madness of its throes to be unbound!
It knows.
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