Oh, my soul! the draught is bitter
Yet it must be sweetly drunken:
Heart and soul! the grinding fetter
Galls, yet have ye never shrunken:
Heart and soul, and pining spirit,
Fail me not! no coward weakness
Such as ye are should inherit--
Be ye strong even in your meekness.
Born were ye to these strange uses,
To brief joy and crushing ill,
To small good and great abuses;
Yet oh, yield not, till they kill.
The stag wounded runneth steady
With his blood in streams a-gushing;
Soul and spirit, be ye ready
For the arrows toward ye rushing.