To —— ("Thou dost not dwell in this dark world of ours")

Thou dost not dwell in this dark world of ours,
Where sorrow, want, and crime, and misery reign;
Where famine stalks; where war’s dread tempest lowers;
Where stands the scaffold, and where clanks the chain.

But far upon the future’s unreached shore,
The promised land to be our heritage;
There thou, in trancéd visions, dost restore
The vanished glories of the Golden Age.