[From “The Sleeping Bard,” by Elis Wynn.]

Heavy’s the heart with wandering below,
And with seeing the things in the country of woe;
Seeing lost men and the fiendish race,
In their very horrible prison place;
Seeing that the end of the crooked track
Is a flaming lake
Where dragon and snake
With rage are swelling.
I’d not, o’er a thousand worlds to reign,
Behold again,
Though safe from pain,
The infernal dwelling.

Heavy’s my heart, whilst so vividly
The place is yet in my memory;
To see so many, to me well known,
Thither unwittingly sinking down.
To-day a hell-dog is yesterday’s man,
And he has no plan,
But others to trepan
To Hell’s dismal revels.
When he reached the pit he a fiend became,
In face and in frame,
And in mind the same
As the very devils.

Heavy’s the heart with viewing the bed,
Where sin has the meed it has merited;
What frightful taunts from forked tongue,
On gentle and simple there are flung!
The ghastliness of the damned things to state,
Or the pains to relate
Which will ne’er abate
But increase for ever,
No power have I, nor others I wot:
Words cannot be got;
The shapes and the spot
Can be pictured never.

Heavy’s the heart, as none will deny,
At losing one’s friend, or the maid of one’s eye;
At losing one’s freedom, one’s land or wealth;
At losing one’s fame, or alas! one’s health;
At losing leisure; at losing ease;
At losing peace
And all things that please
The heaven under.
At losing memory, beauty and grace,
Heart-heaviness,
For a little space
Can cause no wonder.

Heavy’s the heart of man when first
He awakes from his worldly dream accursed;
Fain would he be freed from his awful load
Of sin, and be reconciled with his God;
When he feels for pleasures and luxuries
Disgust arise,
From the agonies
Of the ferment unruly,
Through which he becomes regenerate,
Of Christ the mate,
From his sinful state
Springing blithe and holy.

Heavy’s the heart of the best of mankind,
Upon the bed of death reclined;
In mind and body ill at ease,
Betwixt remorse and the disease,
Vext by sharp pangs and dreading more.
O mortal poor!
O dreadful hour!
Horrors surround him!
To the end of the vain world he has won;
And dark and dun
The Eternal One
Beholds beyond him.

Heavy’s the heart, the pressure below,
Of all the griefs I have mentioned now;
But were they together all met in a mass,
There’s one grief still would all surpass;
Hope frees from each woe, while we this side
Of the wall abide—
At every tide
’Tis an outlet cranny.
But there’s a grief beyond the bier;
Hope will ne’er
Its victims cheer,
That cheers so many.

Heavy’s the heart therewith that’s fraught;
How heavy is mine at merely the thought!
Our worldly woes, however hard,
Are trifles when with that compared:
That woe—which is not known here—that woe
The lost ones know,
And undergo
In the nether regions;
How wretched the man who, exil’d to Hell,
In Hell must dwell,
And curse and yell
With the Hellish legions!

At nought, that may ever betide thee, fret
If at Hell thou art not arrived yet;
But thither, I rede thee, in mind repair
Full oft, and observantly wander there;
Musing intense, after reading me,
Of the flaming sea,
Will speedily thee
Convert by appalling.
Frequent remembrance of the black deep
Thy soul will keep,
Thou erring sheep,
From thither falling.