Blessed! for the Lamb shall feed them,
All their tears shall wipe away,
To the living fountains lead them,
Till fruition's perfect day.
Lo! it comes, that day of wonder!
Louder chorals shake the skies;
Hades' gates are burst asunder;
See the new-clothed myriads rise. Thought repress thy weak endeavor; Here must reason prostrate fall;
O the ineffable Forever!
And the eternal All in All!
"And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances." - EXOD. xv. 20.
SOUND the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea! Jehovah has triumphed, — his people are free! Sing,- for the pride of the tyrant is broken,
His chariots, his horsemen, all splendid and brave,
How vain was their boasting! the Lord hath but spoken,
And chariots and horsemen are sunk in the wave. Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea! Jehovah has triumphed, - his people are free!
Though in the paths of death I tread,
With gloomy horrors overspread,
My steadfast heart shall fear no ill;
For thou, O Lord, art with me still:
Thy friendly crook shall give me aid,
And guide me through the dreadful shade.
Though in a bare and rugged way,
Through devious lonely wilds I stray,
Thy bounty shall my pains beguile;
The barren wilderness shall smile,
With sudden greens and herbage crowned,
And streams shall murmur all around.
JOSEPH ADDISON.
AMAZING, BEAUTEOUS CHANGE!
AMAZING, beauteous change!
A world created new !
My thoughts with transport range,
The lovely scene to view;
In all I trace,
Saviour divine,
The work is thine,
Be thine the praise!
See crystal fountains play
Amidst the burning sands;
The river's winding way
Shines through the thirsty lands;
New grass is seen,
And o'er the meads
Its carpet spreads
Of living green.
Where pointed brambles grew,
Intwined with horrid thorn,
Gay flowers, forever new,
The painted fields adorn, —
The blushing rose
And lily there,
In union fair
Their sweets disclose.
Where the bleak mountain stood
All bare and disarrayed,
See the wide-branching wood
Diffuse its grateful shade;
Tall cedars nod,
And oaks and pines,
And elms and vines
Confess the God.
The tyrants of the plain
Their savage chase give o'er, -
No more they rend the slain,
And thirst for blood no more;
But infant hands
Fierce tigers stroke,
And lions yoke
In flowery bands.
O, when, Almighty Lord!
Shall these glad scenes arise,
To verify thy word,
And bless our wondering eyes?
That earth may raise,
With all its tongues,
United songs
Of ardent praise.
O, HOW THE THOUGHT OF GRACE
O, HOW the thought of God attracts And draws the heart from earth, And sickens it of passing shows
And dissipating mirth!
God only is the creature's home, Though long and rough the road; Yet nothing less can satisfy
The love that longs for God.
O, utter but the name of God
Down in your heart of hearts,
And see how from the world at once
All tempting light departs.
A trusting heart, a yearning eye,
Can win their way above;
If mountains can be moved by faith,
Is there less power in love?
How little of that road, my soul,
How little hast thou gone!
Take heart, and let the thought of God
Allure thee farther on.
Dole not thy duties out to God,
But let thy hand be free; Look long at Jesus; his sweet blood, How was it dealt to thee?
The perfect way is hard to flesh;
It is not hard to love;
If thou wert sick for want of God
How swiftly wouldst thou move!
BEFORE JEHOVAH'S AWFUL THRONE.
BEFORE Jehovah's awful throne,
Ye nations, bow with sacred joy; Know that the Lord is God alone; He can create, and he destroy.
0, what hath Jesus bought for me?
Before my ravished eye,
Rivers of life divine I see,
And trees of Paradise!
I see a world of spirits bright,
Who taste the pleasures there! They all are robed in spotless white, And conquering palms they bear.
O, what are all my sufferings here,
If, Lord, thou count me meet
With that enraptured host to appear,
And worship at thy feet!
Give joy or grief, give ease or pain;
Take life or friends away,
But let me find them all again
In that eternal day..
How still the morning of the hallowed day!
Mute is the voice of rural labor, hushed
The plough-boy's whistle and the milkmaid's
song.
The scythe lies glittering in the dewy wreath
Of tedded grass, mingled with fading flowers,
That yestermorn bloomed waving in the breeze;
Sounds the most faint attract the ear, — the
hum
Of early bee, the trickling of the dew,
The distant bleating, midway up the hill.
Calmness sits throned on yon unmoving cloud.
To him who wanders o'er the upland leas
The blackbird's note comes mellower from the dale;
And sweeter from the sky the gladsome lark Warbles his heaven-tuned song; the lulling brook Murmurs more gently down the deep-worn glen; While from yon lowly roof, whose circling
O'ermounts the mist, is heard at intervals
The voice of psalms, the simple song of praise.
With dovelike wings Peace o'er yon village
broods;
The dizzying mill-wheel rests; the anvil's din
Hath ceased; all, all around is quietness.
Less fearful on this day, the limping hare
Stops, and looks back, and stops, and looks on
Her deadliest foe. The toilworn horse, set free,
Unheedful of the pasture, roams at large;
And as his stiff, unwieldly bulk he rolls,
His iron-armed hoofs gleam in the morning ray.
THE elder folk shook hands at last,
Down seat by seat the signal passed.
To simple ways like ours unused,
Half solemnized and half amused,
With long-drawn breath and shrug, my guest
His sense of glad relief expressed.
Outside the hills lay warm in sun;
The cattle in the meadow-run
Stood half-leg deep; a single bird
The green repose above us stirred.
"What part or lot have you," he said,
"In these dull rites of drowsy-head?
Is silence worship? Seek it where
It soothes with dreams the summer air,
Not in this close and rude-benched hall,
But where soft lights and shadows fall,
And all the slow, sleep-walking hours
Glide soundless over grass and flowers!
From time and place and form apart,
Its holy ground the human heart,
Nor ritual-bound nor templeward
Walks the free spirit of the Lord!
Our common Master did not pen
His followers up from other men ;
His service liberty indeed,
He built no church, he framed no creed;
But while the saintly Pharisee
Made broader his phylactery,
As from the synagogue was seen
The dusty-sandalled Nazarene
Through ripening cornfields lead the way
Upon the awful Sabbath day,
His sermons were the healthful talk
That shorter made the mountain-walk,
His wayside texts were flowers and birds,
Where mingled with his gracious words
The rustle of the tamarisk-tree
And ripple-wash of Galilee."
"Thy words are well, O friend," I said
"Unmeasured and unlimited,
With noiseless slide of stone to stone,
The mystic Church of God has grown.
Invisible and silent stands
The temple never made with hands,
Unheard the voices still and small
Of its unseen confessional.
He needs no special place of prayer
Whose hearing ear is everywhere;
He brings not back the childish days
That ringed the earth with stones of praise,
Roofed Karnak's hall of gods, and laid
The plinths of Phila's colonnade.
Still less he owns the selfish good
And sickly growth of solitude,
The worthless grace that, out of sight,
Flowers in the desert anchorite;
Dissevered from the suffering whole,
Love hath no power to save a soul.
Not out of Self, the origin
And native air and soil of sin,
The living waters spring and flow,
The trees with leaves of healing grow.
"Dream not, O friend, because I seek
This quiet shelter twice a week,
I better deem its pine-laid floor
Than breezy hill or sea-sung shore;
But nature is not solitude;
She crowds us with her thronging wood;
Her many hands reach out to us,
Her many tongues are garrulous;
Perpetual riddles of surprise
She offers to our ears and eyes;
She will not leave our senses still,
But drags them captive at her will;
And, making earth too great for heaven,
She hides the Giver in the given.
"And so I find it well to come
For deeper rest to this still room,
For here the habit of the soul
Feels less the outer world's control;
The strength of mutual purpose pleads
More earnestly our common needs;
And from the silence multiplied.
By these still forms on either side,
The world that time and sense have known
Falls off and leaves us God alone.
"Yet rarely through the charmed repose
Unmixed the stream of motive flows,
A flavor of its many springs,
The tints of earth and sky it brings;
In the still waters needs must be
Some shade of human sympathy;
And here, in its accustomed place,
I look on memory's dearest face;
The blind by-sitter guesseth not
What shadow haunts that vacant spot;
No eyes save mine alone can see
The love wherewith it welcomes me!
And still, with those alone my kin,
In doubt and weakness, want and sin,
I bow my head, my heart I bare
As when that face was living there,
And strive (too oft, alas! in vain)
The peace of simple trust to gain,
Fold fancy's restless wings, and lay
The idols of my heart away.
"Welcome the silence all unbroken,
Nor less the words of fitness spoken, ·
Such golden words as hers for whom
Our autumn flowers have just made room; Whose hopeful utterance through and through The freshness of the morning blew ;
Who loved not less the earth that light
Fell on it from the heavens in sight,
But saw in all fair forms more fair
The Eternal beauty mirrored there.
Whose eighty years but added grace
And saintlier meaning to her face, -
The look of one who bore away
Glad tidings from the hills of day,
While all our hearts went forth to meet
The coming of her beautiful feet!
Or haply hers whose pilgrim tread
Is in the paths where Jesus led;
Who dreams her childhood's sabbath dream
By Jordan's willow-shaded stream,
And, of the hymns of hope and faith,
Sung by the monks of Nazareth,
Hears pious echoes, in the call
To prayer, from Moslem minarets fall,
Repeating where His works were wrought
The lesson that her Master taught,
Of whom an elder Sibyl gave,
The prophecies of Cuma's cave!
"I ask no organ's soulless breath
To drone the themes of life and death,
No altar candle-lit by day,
No ornate wordsman's rhetoric-play,
No cool philosophy to teach
Its bland audacities of speech
To doubled-tasked idolaters,
Themselves their gods and worshippers,
No pulpit hammered by the fist
Of loud-asserting dogmatist,
Who borrows for the hand of love
The smoking thunderbolts of Jove.
I know how well the fathers taught,
What work the later schoolmen wrought;
I reverence old-time faith and men,
But God is near us now as then;
His force of love is still unspent,
His hate of sin as imminent;
And still the measure of our needs
Outgrows the cramping bounds of creeds;
The manna gathered yesterday
Already savors of decay
Doubts to the world's child-heart unknown
Question us now from star and stone;
Too little or too much we know,
And sight is swift and faith is slow;
The power is lost to self-deceive
With shallow forms of make-believe.
We walk at high noon, and the bells
Call to a thousand oracles,
But the sound deafens, and the light
Is stronger than our dazzled sight;
The letters of the sacred Book
Glimmer and swim beneath our look;
Still struggles in the Age's breast
With deepening agony of quest
The old entreaty: Art thou He,
Or look we for the Christ to be?'
"God should be most where man is least;
So, where is neither church nor priest,
And never rag of form or creed
To clothe the nakedness of need,
Where farmer-folk in silence meet,
I turn my bell-unsummoned feet;
I lay the critic's glass aside,
I tread upon my lettered pride,
And, lowest-seated, testify
To the oneness of humanity;
Confess the universal want,
And share whatever Heaven may grant.
He findeth not who seeks his own,
The soul is lost that 's saved alone.
Not on one favored forehead fell
Of old the fire-tongued miracle,
But flamed o'er all the thronging host
The baptism of the Holy Ghost;
Heart answers heart: in one desire
The blending lines of prayer aspire ;
'Where, in my name, meet two or three,'
Our Lord hath said, 'I there will be !'
"So sometimes comes to soul and sense
The feeling which is evidence
That very near about us lies
The realm of spiritual mysteries.
The sphere of the supernal powers
Impinges on this world of ours.
The low and dark horizon lifts,
To light the scenic terror shifts;
The breath of a diviner air
Blows down the answer of a prayer :-
That all our sorrow, pain, and doubt
A great compassion clasps about,
And law and goodness, love and force,
Are wedded fast beyond divorce.
Then duty leaves to love its task,
The beggar Self forgets to ask ;
With smile of trust and folded hands,
The passive soul in waiting stands
To feel, as flowers the sun and dew,
The One true Life its own renew.
"So, to the calmly gathered thought
The innermost of truth is taught,
The mystery dimly understood,
That love of God is love of good,
And, chiefly, its divinest trace
In Him of Nazareth's holy face;
That to be saved is only this,
Salvation from our selfishness,
From more than elemental fire,
The soul's unsanctified desire,
From sin itself, and not the pain
That warns us of its chafing chain;
That worship's deeper meaning lies
In mercy, and not sacrifice,
Not proud humilities of sense
And posturing of penitence,
But love's unforced obedience;
That Book and Church and Day are given
For man, not God, for earth, not heaven,
The blessed means to holiest ends,
Not masters, but benignant friends;
That the dear Christ dwells not afar,
The king of some remoter star,
But flamed o'er all the thronging host
The baptism of the Holy Ghost;
Heart answers heart in one desire
The blending lines of prayer aspire ;
'Where, in my name, meet two or three,'
Our Lord hath said, 'I there will be !'"
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.
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