World of Light

I walked among life's filth and poverty,

Saw cruelly broken bones of a beggar's child,

The bleeding stumps of lepers challenged me,

Human chattel beaten and defiled.

One cannot know the dark depravity

Of beings void of soul or consciousness

Or to what depths of abject misery

Man stoops to feed his willful wantonness.

They dwell in that unholy atmosphere

And battle for the body's right to stay -

How easy for the soul to disappear

From earth and all the torments of the way.

But through the body's plight the spirit grows

And hunts for truth amid the lairs of night,

In every heart there lives a mystic rose,

Its fragrance draws us to the world of light.