IS there a ray of hope?

Most people got soul if they want to try 

Let love be your goal and let it fly 

'Cause it's easy to hate and to draw a line 

But error is human forgiveness is divine 

I know a lot of people who think like me 

That this world can be a place that's filled with harmony 

First there's a lot of things we've got to rearrange 

Put an end to hate and lies 

So peace can come and truth shall reign 

As long as there is a ray of hope 

Lord, I don't mind going out and doin' my work 

Light up the way to brotherhood 

Help us to make His dream understood 

Sometimes the road gets a little bit rough 

Your strength is all gone, you had enough 

But there's people who win without making fists 

Our world won't survive lest we think like this 

I can't imagine any greater need 

To treat each other as we'd like to be 

It's a gas just knowing what is yet to come 

Not unless we get together 

Got to get together one by one 

As long as there is a ray of hope 

Lord, I don't mind goin out and doin my work 

Light up the way to brotherhood 

I got to keep on searchin, keep on searchin 

'Til I find out 

Keep on searchin, keep on searchin 

'Til I find out 

Keep on searchin, keep on searchin

'Til I find out 

Gonna take a little look way down inside 

Gotta find out Lord, why I'm alive 

We'll pray for a day when all men are free

And people can live like they're meant to be 

Meanwhile it's all up to you and me 

Start working together towards this dream 

As long as there is a ray of hope
Lord, I don't mind goin out and doin my work
Light up the way to brotherhood
Help us to make His dream understood
As long as there is a ray of hope
I got to wait my turn 'til I can vote
As long as there is a ray of hope

Blogger's note. This song popped into my head, but the version I remembered was hard to chase down, because it isn't the original. It ends, strangely, with a couple lines from Battle Hymn of the Republic - but consider the source. To Americans, it's just a wonderful and patriotic hymn with no bad connotations. It's "glory, glory, hallelujah" - which reminds me of THIS:

This isn't a time for "vict'ry" OR defeat, but a time for sanity regained before it is too late and total anarchy descends on the catastrophic mess that is the United States.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming

Things fall apart

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

This other man I had dreamed

A drunken, vainglorious lout.

He had done most bitter wrong

To some who are near my heart.

Yet I number him in the song;

He, too, has resigned his part

In the casual comedy;

He, too, has been changed in his turn,

Transformed utterly:

        A terrible beauty is born.

(Excerpts from poetry by W. B. Yeats)