When no more wickedness rages,
When no iniquity hinders,
But sin is burnt down to its cinders!--

"Cruelties?--somehow permitted,--
With its mute victims unpitied,
Tortured in nature's defiance
On the false pretext of science,--

"Shall not some aeon of gladness,
Balance the throes of pain-madness,--
Must not the crime of the cruel
Burn into souls as its fuel?

"Never can wisdom's creation
Be stultified annihilation,
But every poor unit that liveth
Shall live in the life that He giveth,--

"Yea, for that aeon of glory,
Revealed in millennial story,
When earth with beatified features,
Shines the new Heaven of creatures.

"Death? Is it all things, or nothing?
Either the Spirit unclothing
Unto new living for ever,--
Or the dread penalty--never!

"Death,--if thou art but the portal,
Leading to glories immortal,
Why should we tremble to near thee,
How be the cowards to fear thee,

"Since the worlds blazing above us,
Peopled by angels who love us,
Stand our fatherly mansions,
Fitted for spirits' expansions?

"Where are the dead? and what doing?
Still their old trifles pursuing?
Or in the trance of a slumber,
Crowded by dreams without number?--

"Dreams of unspeakable sadness,
Breams of ineffable gladness,--
As the quick conscience remembers
Evil and good in their embers,--

"As it lives over in quiet,
Time and its orgies of riot,
Or the good gifts and good graces,
Bright'ning its happier phases,--

"As it sees photograph'd clearly,
Crystalised sharply and nearly,
Life and its million transactions,
Fancies and feelings and factions,--

"Every prayer ever uttered,
Every curse ever muttered,
All the man's lowest and highest,--
These are thyself, when thou diest!

"Filling thee, after thy measure,
From the full river of pleasure,
Or, as the fruit of thy sowing,
Pangs of remorse ever growing,--

"In thee all Heaven upspringing,
Or its dread opposite flinging
Blackness and darkness about thee,--
Both are within, not without thee!

"Yet,--in that darkness, we grope for
Somewhat far off, yet to hope for,
That through some future repentance,
Justice may soften its sentence.

"Ere from the dead He had risen,
'He preached to the spirits in