Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume IV. The Higher Life. 1904. | | | | VII. Death: Immortality: Heaven | | “Forever with the Lord” | | James Montgomery (1771–1854) |
| | | FOREVER with the Lord! | |
| Amen! so let it be! | |
| Life from the dead is in that word, | |
| And immortality. | |
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| Here in the body pent, | 5 |
| Absent from him I roam, | |
| Yet nightly pitch my moving tent | |
| A day’s march nearer home. | |
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| My Father’s house on high, | |
| Home of my soul! how near, | 10 |
| At times, to faith’s foreseeing eye | |
| Thy golden gates appear! | |
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| Ah! then my spirit faints | |
| To reach the land I love, | |
| The bright inheritance of saints, | 15 |
| Jerusalem above! | |
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| Yet clouds will intervene, | |
| And all my prospect flies; | |
| Like Noah’s dove, I flit between | |
| Rough seas and stormy skies. | 20 |
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| Anon the clouds depart, | |
| The winds and waters cease; | |
| While sweetly o’er my gladdened heart | |
| Expands the bow of peace! | |
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| Beneath its glowing arch, | 25 |
| Along the hallowed ground, | |
| I see cherubic armies march, | |
| A camp of fire around. | |
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| I hear at morn and even, | |
| At noon and midnight hour, | 30 |
| The choral harmonies of heaven | |
| Earth’s Babel tongues o’erpower. | |
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| Then, then I feel that he, | |
| Remembered or forgot, | |
| The Lord, is never far from me, | 35 |
| Though I perceive him not. | |
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| In darkness as in light, | |
| Hidden alike from view, | |
| I sleep, I wake, as in his sight | |
| Who looks all nature through. | 40 |
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| All that I am, have been, | |
| All that I yet may be, | |
| He sees at once, as he hath seen, | |
| And shall forever see. | |
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| “Forever with the Lord;” | 45 |
| Father, if ’t is thy will, | |
| The promise of that faithful word | |
| Unto thy child fulfil! | |
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| So, when my latest breath | |
| Shall rend the veil in twain, | 50 |
| By death I shall escape from death, | |
| And life eternal gain. | | | | |
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