University of Virginia Library

REMORSE

Oh! 'tis a fearful thing to glance
Back on the gloom of mis-spent years:
What shadowy forms of guilt advance,
And fill me with a thousand fears!
The vices of my life arise,
Pourtray'd in shapes, alas! too true;
And not one beam of hope breaks through,
To cheer my old and aching eyes,
T' illume my night of wretchedness,
My age of anguish and distress.
If I am damn'd, why find I not
Some comfort in this earthly spot?
But no! this world and that to come
Are both to me one scene of gloom!
Lest ought of solace I should see,
Or lose the thoughts of what I do,
Remorse, with soul-felt agony,
Holds up the mirror to my view.
And I was cursed from my birth,
A reptile made to creep on earth,
An hopeless outcast, born to die
A living death eternally!
With too much conscience to have rest,
Too little to be ever blest,
To yon vast world of endless woe,
Unlighted by the cheerful day,
My soul shall wing her weary way;
To those dread depths where aye the same,
Throughout the waste of darkness, glow
The glimmerings of the boundless flame.
And yet I cannot here below
Take my full cup of guilt, as some,
And laugh away my doom to come.
I would I'd been all-heartless! then
I might have sinn'd like other men;
But all this side the grave is fear,
A wilderness so dank and drear,
That never wholesome plant would spring;
And all behind—I dare not think!
I would not risk th' imagining—
From the full view my spirits shrink;
And starting backwards, yet I cling
To life, whose every hour to me
Hath been increase of misery.
But yet I cling to it, for well
I know the pangs that rack me now
Are trifles, to the endless hell
That waits me, when my burning brow
And my wrung eyes shall hope in vain
For one small drop to cool the pain,
The fury of that madd'ning flame
That then shall scorch my writhing frame!
Fiends! who have goaded me to ill!
Distracting fiends, who goad me still!
If e'er I work'd a sinful deed,
Ye know how bitter was the draught;
Ye know my inmost soul would bleed,
And ye have look'd at me and laugh'd,
Triumphing that I could not free
My spirit from your slavery!
Yet is there that in me which says,
Should these old feet their course retread
From out the portal of my days,
That I should lead the life I've led:
My agony, my torturing shame,
My guilt, my errors all the same!
Oh, God! that thou wouldst grant that ne'er
My soul its clay-cold bed forsake,
That I might sleep, and never wake
Unto the thrill of conscious fear;
For when the trumpet's piercing cry
Shall burst upon my slumb'ring ear,
And countless seraphs throng the sky,
How shall I cast my shroud away,
And come into the blaze of day?
How shall I brook to hear each crime,
Here veil'd by secrecy and time,
Read out from thine eternal book?
How shall I stand before thy throne,
While earth shall like a furnace burn?
How shall I bear the with'ring look
Of men and angels, who will turn
Their dreadful gaze on me alone?