A Place not Far Away

There is a place not far away
Where truth and wisdom reign,
Where justice is not absent or delayed
And good is not what evil has ordained.

There, by strokes of stupefying bliss,
The torrid gale is stilled,
And sails of solitary souls, aship on seas
   of sins remiss,
Everlastingly are filled.

Hell and Heaven are not some other place
But are ways to see what is,
That this so mortal self may, even yet,
Through elegant triumphs over death,

From its thatch of temporal pigment
And transient things,
Hatch upon some figment
And fly on wings

Supportable by a breath.


by Robert Hampton Burt
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