The World to Come

The World to Come

If all our hopes and all our fears

Were prisoned in life's narrow bound;

If travelers through this vale of tears,

We saw no better world beyond;

Oh! what could check the rising sigh?

What earthly thing could pleasure give?

Oh! who would venture then to die?

Or who could then endure to live?

Were life a dark and desert moor,

Where mists and clouds eternal spread

Their gloomy veil behind, before,

And tempests thunder over head;

Where not a sunbeam breaks the gloom,

And not a flow'ret smiles beneath—

Who could exist in such a tomb?

Who dwell in darkness and in death?

And such were life, without the ray

From our divine religion given;

'Tis this that makes our darkness day:

'Tis this that makes our earth a heaven!

Bright is the golden sun above,

And beautiful the flowers that bloom,

And all is joy and all is love,

Reflected from the world to come!

Unattributed

1:7, p. 1

9.3.1859