If this were all (2013 rev)
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Transcript of If this were all (2013 rev)
![Page 1: If this were all (2013 rev)](https://reader036.fdocuments.net/reader036/viewer/2022081603/55849c78d8b42adf458b4fb3/html5/thumbnails/1.jpg)
by
Edgar A. Guest
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If this were all of life we'll know,
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If this brief space of breath
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Were all there is to human toil
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If death were really death,
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And never should the soul arise A finer world to see,
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How foolish would our struggles seem,
How grim the earth would be!
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If living were the whole of life, To end in seventy years,
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How pitiful its joys would seem! How idle all its tears!
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There'd be no faith to keep us true, No hope to keep us strong,
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And only fools would cherish dreams—No smile would last for long.
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How purposeless the strife would beIf there were nothing more,
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If there were not a plan to serve, An end to struggle for!
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No reason for a mortal's birth Except to have him die--
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How silly all the goals would seem For which men bravely try.
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There must be something after death; Behind the toil of man
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There must exist a God divine Who's working out a plan;
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And this brief journey that we know As life must really be
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The gateway to a finer
world That some day
we shall see.
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Note: This poem is written in my mother's hand on the last page of a Bible I found while cleaning out my father's library in 1997. The Bible is inscribed as follows:
To Ruby Lee Perry: For the best composition on the Life of Paul. From your Leader….W. L Watkins
There is no date, but it must have been given to her in Park Street Baptist Church in Columbia, S.C., around 1921 when she was a teenager. It is one of only two writings I have in my mother's hand. My mother did not live her "seventy years". She died at age 33 on Christmas Day, 1941, when I was seven. Two younger siblings died in their early years and her sister, Margaret Perry, died at age 21. Perhaps that is why this poem meant a lot to her. Until my children were born, I was the only surviving member of the Perry family. My father, James P. Wesberry died exactly 51 years after my mother, on Christmas Day 1992. I look forward to the
"gateway to a finer world"…James P. Wesberry, Jr.