| Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said,
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| There is a man child conceived
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| Let that day be darkness; |
| let not God regard it from above, neither let the
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| light shine upon it
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| Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; |
| let a cloud dwell upon it;
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| let the blackness of the day terrify it
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| As for that night, let darkness seize upon it; |
| let it not be joined unto the
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| days of the year, let it not come into the number of the months
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| Lo, let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come therein
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| Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready to raise up their mourning
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| Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; |
| let it look for light,
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| but have none; |
| neither let it see the dawning of the day
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| Because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s womb, nor hid sorrow from mine
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| eyes
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| Why died I not from the womb? |
| why did I not give up the ghost when I came out
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| of the belly?
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| Why did the knees prevent me? |
| or why the breasts that I should suck?
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| For now should I have lain still and been quiet
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| I should have slept: then had I been at rest
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| With kings and counsellers of the earth, which built desolate places for
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| themselves;
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| Or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver:
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| Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been; |
| as infants which never saw light
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| There the wicked cease from troubling; |
| and there the weary be at rest
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| There the prisoners rest together; |
| and the servant is free from his master
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| Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in
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| soul;
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| Which long for death, but it cometh not; |
| and dig for it more than for hid
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| treasures;
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| Which rejoice exceedingly, when they can find the grave?
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| Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in?
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| I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; |
| yet trouble came |