Immortality

[First published 1867.]

FOIL’D by our fellow men, depress’d, outworn,

We leave the brutal world to take its way,

And, Patience! in another life, we say,

The world shall be thrust down, and we up-borne!

And will not, then, the immortal armies scorn

The world’s poor, routed leavings; or will they,

Who fail’d under the heat of this life’s day,

Support the fervours of the heavenly morn?

No, no! the energy of life may be

Kept on after the grave, but not begun;

And he who flagg’d not in the earthly strife,

From strength to strength advancing—only he,

His soul well-knit, and all his battles won,

Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life.