Page images
PDF
EPUB

And the resurrection's power
Comes to every dying hour.
When the soul, with vision clear,
Learns that heaven is always near,
Never more shall it be said,

"Gone is gone, and dead is dead."

Lizzie Doten.

Child with the Snowy Cheek.

CHILD with the snowy cheek,

Child with the stainless brow,

Thy white-robed form and look so meek Are as an angel's now.

Death's mystery hath cast

Its strangeness o'er thy face,

But the angel marred not as he passed

One line of its tender grace.

He but folded the waxen hands,

Sent sleep on the gladsome eyes,

And wrapped thee round with the viewless bands

Of death's great, still surprise.

Now into the upper life,

Into realms of infinite peace,

Thou hast entered at once, untouched by the strife

That comes with our life's increase.

Into the infinite love,

Into the cloudless light,

Into the welcome that waited above,

Below thee, the storm and night.

Saved from the toilsome way

We travel with weary feet,

From the bitterness hid in the cup alway,

Whose first taste is so sweet.

The base and the unkind,

The cruel and the untrue,

Soiling and stain of the deathless mind,
Fair child, are not for you.

For you there is gladness and rest
Where the white-robed singers stand,
Where pain is forgotten and sorrow is blest,
In the soul's own fatherland;

Where the little ones of earth,
In gardens and meadows broad,

Wandering and playing, make musical mirth By the soft-flowing river of God.

But we! In a world of pain, We linger and weep and wait;

And we strive in vain any glimpse to gain Of thee and the Beautiful Gate.

For the gate that is gold to thee, Golden and jewelled and bright,

Is wrapped in a gloom on the side we see,Its sentinels, Fear and Night.

But the gate of gloom and of gold Will open to us some day,

On hinges of silence backward rolled; And Fear will vanish away.

And Night into Morning will change,

As the light of the Land comes out,

And a rapture, sudden and sweet and strange, Succeed to our trouble and doubt.

Oh, blessed and strong and sweet

The hope of that coming time,

When thy welcoming hands our hands shall meet In the gate of the Life Sublime;

In the gate of the City of God;

In the gate of the Infinite Peace;

In the sweet dawn-light that shall shine abroad O'er the fields of our love's increase.

W. H. Sav

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]
[blocks in formation]

Love cannot die: eternity

Shall keep your sacred trust, be sure;
"For God is love," and heaven must be
A home where love may dwell secure.

Look onward! High above the tomb
The omens of the morning shine!
The evening has its transient gloom,
The morrow comes with beams divine.

W. H. Savage.

The Finished Life.

THERE'S a beauty of the spring-time
With its fresh grass and its flowers,
With the song-birds in the branches
And the children's happy hours.

But there is no less of beauty

When the leaves turn gold and brown
In the short'ning days of autumn,
And far south the birds have flown.

If the rough hand of the tempest
Tears away the fresh young leaves,
Over youthful vigor wasted,

Who can wonder if one grieves?

But when off the autumn branches
Drop the brown leaves one by one,
Seems it then as fair and fitting
As the setting of the sun.

Here the old man by the fireside

Backward looks through tender tears, And he says, "With wife and children Trod I long and happy years."

As he sitteth by the window
Looking o'er the city ways,
Whispers he, "Success and honor
Have been mine in gone by days.

« PreviousContinue »