Poems

Dear Lord, the bad are miserable all,

Be not Thou deaf, like them, unto my prayer,

It is for them I call."

"Child, life and hope were with thee at thy birth,

But life soon bowed thy tender form to earth,

And hope forsook thee in thy hour of need.

Come, for thy Saviour had His pains divine;

Come, for His brow was crowned with thorns like thine,

His sceptre was a reed."

He cries: "Then have I finished my long life?

Are all its evils over, all its strife,

And will no cruel jailer evermore

Wake me to pain, this blissful vision o'er?

Is it no dream that nothing else remains

Of all my torments but this answered cry,

And have I had, O God, amid my chains,

The happiness to die?

"For none can tell what cause I had to pine,

What pangs, what miseries, each day were mine;

And when I wept there was no mother near