HOW LONG! Do they still linger-these slow-treading ages? How long must we still bear their cold delay? Streak after streak the glowing dawn presages; And yet it breaks not-the expected day! Each tossing year, with prophet-lip hath spoken, "Prepare your praises, earth awake and sing!" And yet yon dome of blue remains unbroken; No tidings yet of the descending King! Darkness still darkens; nearer now and nearer The lightnings gleam; the sea's scorched billows. moan; And the sere leaf of earth is growing serer; Creation droops, and heaves a bitterer groan. O storm and earthquake, wind and warring thunder, HOW LONG! These plains are not your battle-field for ever; you; : hiver; These buds are not for your rude hands to strew. Flee and give back to earth its verdant gladness, The early freshness of its unsoiled dew; 65 Take hence your sackcloth, with its stormy sadness; And let these wrinkled skies their youth renew. Give back that day of days, the seventh and fairest, Her glory, of creation's gems the rarest, Come back, thou holy love, so rudely banished, When evil came, and hate, and fear, and wrong; Return, thou joyous light, so quickly vanished; Revive, thou life that death has quenched so long; Re-fix, re-knit the chain so harshly broken, That bound this lower orb to yon bright heaven; Hang out on high the ever-golden token, That tells of earth renewed and man forgiven. 66 A LITTLE WHILE. Withdraw the veil that has for ages hidden That upper kingdom from this nether sphere; Renew the fellowship so long forbidden; O God, thyself take up thy dwelling here! A LITTLE WHILE. BEYOND the smiling and the weeping Beyond the waking and the sleeping, I shall be soon. Love, rest, and home! Sweet hope! Lord, tarry not, but come. Beyond the blooming and the fading, Beyond the shining and the shading, A LITTLE WHILE. 67 Love, rest, and home! Sweet hope! Lord, tarry not, but come. Beyond the rising and the setting Beyond the calming and the fretting, Love, rest, and home! Sweet hope! Lord, tarry not, but come. Beyond the gathering and the strowing Beyond the ebbing and the flowing, Beyond the coming and the going, I shall be soon. Love, rest, and home! Sweet hope! Lord, tarry not, but come. Beyond the parting and the meeting I shall be soon. 68 A LITTLE WHILE. Beyond the farewell and the greeting, I shall be soon. Love, rest, and home! Sweet hope! Lord, tarry not, but come. Beyond the frost-chain and the fever Beyond the rock-waste and the river, I shall be soon. Love, rest, and home! Sweet hope! Lord, tarry not, but come. |