 | Blank verse (1798) |  |
19
[Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.]
Burton, August 1797.
Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Through many tribulations ye shall enter the kingdom of heaven.
Through many tribulations ye shall enter the kingdom of heaven.
Dishearten'd outcasts, wheresoe'er ye be,
Who drag along the burden of a life,
Whose uses all seem blasted; ye who look,
And in the wide world's desolated round
Meet with no heart that heeds, no friendly hands
To work your glad deliverance: mournful ones,
Be of good cheer, for he whose loves and hopes,
Whose mortified desires are disciplin'd
By bitter disappointment (e'en till all
Or gross or bodily unsensualliz'd
Waits on the spiritual) in better worlds
24
Methinks the sum of hopes and joys withdrawn
From life's entanglements, doth manifest
The measure of our confidence in Heaven.
And for each mortal buffetting below
A guerdon of unutterable price
Shall there await us.—Bear ye then your cross
With inward quiet, ye despised ones!
Cleans'd by the trespasses of those who fain
Would vex your souls: turn ye their evil to good!
Yea, all the enemies ye meet, transform'd
By magic of unconquerable truth
Of ministers of happiness (themselves
Blind to the effect meanwhile) shall point away
Miraculous, of high triumph; and refine
Your spirits for the company of the just;
25
Or mortal change, shall vex the soul no more.
When in this low state man begins to live,
Though destin'd for a high career, a being
Mysterious, incorporeal, infinite,
He (shapeless embryo, whose future powers
Slumber in nothingness to the unpurg'd eye)
Is as the beasts who perish! Nor high Heaven,
A thing so prone to earth, to sense, could raise,
So prone to joys, which e'en the downward brute
May share in common, save by trial of pain,
And all the hard inflictions which correct
Our carnal longings. These so fierce desires
(Turbulent drudges to the better part)
Furnish the active impulse, push us on
To bold endeavour: but the end denied,
26
Of feelings, thoughts, imaginations, (food
For the infant reason) and with sense unblest
Combines the loftier ardours of the soul.
Thus e'en base lust the being may befriend
Destin'd for high perfection, minist'ring
New aims, exciting to activity,
Most fortunate when most ungratified.
These are the chasten'd strangers in this world,
Loved of God, who blasts, or ere obtain'd,
The promis'd pleasure; thus transferring all
Their disappointed feelings, blighted hopes,
To the ‘divine stability of Heaven.’
And blest are they who meekly turn their cheeks
27
Who in the furnace of affliction tried,
Shall thence come forth, enduring to the end.
| Blank verse (1798) | |