Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray from the straight road and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood.

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I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightfoward pathway had been lost. Ah me! How hard a thing is to say, what was this forest savage, rough, and stern, which in the very thought renews the fear. So bitter is it, death is little more.

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It was the hour of morning, when the sun mounts with those stars that shone with it when God’s own love first set in motion those fair things.

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Lost are we, and are only so far punished, That without hope we live on in desire.

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For she doth make my veins and pulses tremble.

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Be like a solid tower whose brave height remains unmoved by all the winds that blow; the man who lets his thoughts be turned aside by one thing or another, will lose sight of his true goal, his mind sapped of its strength.

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Now you know how much my love for you burns deep in me when I forget about our emptiness, and deal with shadows as with solid things.

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Hope not ever to see Heaven. I have come to lead you to the other shore; into eternal darkness; into fire and into ice.

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At grief so deep the tongue must wag in vain; the language of our sense and memory lacks the vocabulary of such pain.

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Through me you go into a city of weeping; through me you go into eternal pain; through me you go amongst the lost people.

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