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" Human beings suffer.
They torture one another
They get hurt and they get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a farther shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing,
The utter self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
And lightening and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.
It means once in a lifetime
That justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme. "

Seamus Heaney , The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles' Philoctetes


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Seamus Heaney quote : Human beings suffer.<br />They torture one another<br />They get hurt and they get hard.<br />No poem or play or song<br />Can fully right a wrong<br />Inflicted and endured.<br /><br />History says, Don't hope<br />On this side of the grave,<br />But then, once in a lifetime<br />The longed-for tidal wave<br />Of justice can rise up<br />And hope and history rhyme.<br /><br />So hope for a great sea-change<br />On the far side of revenge.<br />Believe that a farther shore<br />Is reachable from here.<br />Believe in miracles<br />And cures and healing wells.<br /><br />Call miracle self-healing,<br />The utter self-revealing<br />Double-take of feeling.<br />If there's fire on the mountain<br />And lightening and storm<br />And a god speaks from the sky<br /><br />That means someone is hearing<br />The outcry and the birth-cry<br />Of new life at its term.<br />It means once in a lifetime<br />That justice can rise up<br />And hope and history rhyme.