In all the stages of our mortal round
From lisping; infancy to palsied age,
By all the ways to human frailty known,
Enter that vale of shadows, deep and still,
Leaving behind their pomp and power and wealth,
Leaving their rags and wretchedness and want,
And cast-off bodies, dust to dust returned,
By flames consumed or moldering to decay,
While here the real character appeared,
All shows, hypocrisies and shams cast off,
So that a life of gentleness and love
Shines through the face and molds the outer form
To living beauty, blooming not to fade,
While every act of cruelty and crime
Seems like a gangrened ever-widening wound,
Wasting the very substance of the soul,
Marring its beauty, eating out its strength.

And here arrived, the good, in little groups
Together drawn by inward sympathy,
And led by devas, take the upward way
To those sweet fields his opened eyes had seen,
Those ever-widening mansions of delight;
While those poor souls--O sad and fearful sight!--
The very well-springs of the life corrupt,
Shrink from the light and shun the pure and good,
Fly from the devas, who with perfect love
Would gladly soothe their anguish, ease their pain,
Fly on and down that broad and beaten road,
Till in the distance in the darkness lost.