Miserere Me Poem by John Bowring

O Thou! whose smiling face of light
Can make life's darkness day,
Whose mercies, bountiful and bright,
Can shed o'er sorrow's gloomy night
A rapture-giving ray.
Look down upon the suffering child,
Who, travelling through life's desert wild,
By fear misled,-by hope beguiled,
Hath wandered far astray.


O lead him on, Thou wise and good!
Through this deep wilderness,-
This dark and awful solitude,
Where doubt and dread of dangers rude
And mental bitterness
Have veiled his soul with pall-like gloom-
Have stolen life's beauty and its bloom-
Or else recall him to the tomb,
Where he may sleep in peace.