| Alfred H. Miles, ed. The Sacred Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907. | | | Memorials of Theophilus Trinal, Student (1850).
VI. Rest | | By Thomas Toke Lynch (1818–1871) |
| | | THE DAY is over, | |
| The feverish, careful day: | |
| Can I recover | |
| Strength that has ebbed away? | |
| Can even sleep such freshness give, | 5 |
| That I again shall wish to live? | |
| |
| Let me lie down, | |
| No more I seek to have | |
| A heavenly crown, | |
| Give me a quiet grave; | 10 |
| Release and not reward I ask, | |
| Too hard for me life’s heavy task. | |
| |
| Now let me rest, | |
| Hushed be my striving brain, | |
| My beating breast; | 15 |
| Let me put off my pain, | |
| And feel me sinking, sinking deep | |
| Into an abyss of sleep. | |
| |
| The morrow’s noise, | |
| Its aguish hope and fear, | 20 |
| Its empty joys, | |
| Of these I shall not hear; | |
| Call me no more, I cannot come; | |
| I’m gone to be at rest, at home. | |
| |
| Earth undesired, | 25 |
| And not for heaven meet; | |
| For one so tired | |
| What’s left but slumber sweet, | |
| Beneath a grassy mound of trees, | |
| Or at the bottom of the seas? | 30 |
| |
| Yet let me have, | |
| Once in a thousand years, | |
| Thoughts in my grave, | |
| To know how free from fears | |
| I sleep, and that I there shall lie | 35 |
| Through undisturbed eternity. | |
| |
| And when I wake, | |
| Then let me hear above | |
| The birds that make | |
| Songs not of human love: | 40 |
| Or muffled tones my ears may reach | |
| Of storms that sound from beach to beach. | |
| |
| But hark! what word | |
| Breathes through this twilight dim? | |
| “Rest in the Lord, | 45 |
| Wait patiently for Him; | |
| Return, O soul, and thou shalt have | |
| A better rest than in thy grave.” | |
| |
| My God, I come; | |
| But I was sorely shaken: | 50 |
| Art Thou my home? | |
| I thought I was forsaken: | |
| I know Thou art a sweeter rest | |
| Than earth’s soft side or ocean’s breast. | |
| |
| Yet this my cry!— | 55 |
| “I ask no more for heaven, | |
| Now let me die, | |
| For I have vainly striven.” | |
| I had, but for that word from Thee, | |
| Renounced my immortality. | 60 |
| |
| Now I return; | |
| Return, O Lord, to me; | |
| I cannot earn | |
| That Heaven I’ll ask of Thee; | |
| But with Thy Peace amid the strife | 65 |
| I still can live in hope of Life. | |
| |
| The careful day, | |
| The feverish day is over; | |
| Strength ebbed away, | |
| I lie down to recover; | 70 |
| With sleep from Him I shall be blest, | |
| Whose word has brought my sorrows rest. | | | | |
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