Original - Duke Divinity School

Nor add to any Loss a nobler Day;
But with kind Hopes support thy Mind,
And think thy better Lot behind:
Amidst Afflictions let thy Soul be Great,
And show Thou dar’st deserve a better State.
Then, lovely Mourner, wipe those Tears away,
And Cares that urge Thee to decay;
Like ravenous Age thy Charms they waste,
Wrinkle thy youthful Brow, and blooming beauties blast.
But keep thy Looks and Mind serene,
All Gay without, all Calm within;
For Fate is awed, and adverse Fortunes fly
A Chearful Look, and an unconquer’d Eye.
Hymn to Darkness 203
by the Same
Darkness, Thou first kind Parent of us all,
Thou art our Great Original:
Since from Thy Universal Womb
Does all Thou shad’st below, thy numerous offspring, come.
Thy Wondrous Birth is ev’n to Time unknown,
Or, like Eternity, Thou ’dst none;
Whilst Light did its first being owe
Unto that awful Shade it dares to rival now.
Say, in what distant Region dost Thou dwell,
To Reason inaccessible?
From form and duller Matter free,
Thou soar’st above the reach of Man’s Philosophy.
Involv’d in Thee, we first receive our Breath,
Thou art our refuge too in Death,
Great Monarch of the Grave and Womb,
Where e’er our souls shall go, to Thee our Bodies come.
203 Thomas Yalden, “A Hymn to Darkness,” In Dryden, ed., Miscellanies, 3:57–59. Wesley published in
Collection of Moral and Sacred Poems, 1:62–65 (restoring the first of three stanzas that he deletes here).
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