Find the world changed into a wilderness;
As deep the desolation of a mind
(With all to cheer it, and with all to bless)
That, to its own self-fostered gloom resigned,
Rejects the happiness God bade it seek and find.
My parents, faithful soldiers of the Cross,
Had o’er successive offspring closed the tomb,
And—ere my infant heart could know its loss—
They too had sunk beneath the mortal doom,—
My life, in sorrow passed, commenced in gloom.