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No hope fulfilled its promise; and no dream Was ever worth its waking bitterness. Then there was love, that crowding into one All vanity, all sorrow, all remorse: Till we loathe life, glad, beauteous, hoping life, And would be fain to lay our burthen down, Although we might but lay it in the grave, All natural terror lost in hope of peace. God of those stars, to which I once appealed In a vain fantasy of sympathy, How wretched I have been in my few years! How have I wept throughout the sleepless nights Then sank in heavy slumber, misery still Haunting its visions: morning's cold gray light Waked me reluctant, for though sleep had been Anguish, yet I could say it was but sleep. And then day came, with all those vanities With which our nature mocks its wretchedness, The toilsome pleasures, and the dull pursuits; Efforts to fly ourselves, and made in vain. Too soon I learnt the secret of our life, That "vanity of vanities" is writ Deep in the hidden soul of human things; And then I sank into despondency, And lived from habit, not from hope; and fear Stood between me and death, and only fear; I was a castaway: for, like the fool, Within my soul I said there is no God. But then a mighty and a glorious voice