Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume IV. The Higher Life. 1904. | | | | VII. Death: Immortality: Heaven | | Heaven | | Isaac Watts (1674–1748) |
| | | THERE is a land of pure delight, | |
| Where saints immortal reign; | |
| Infinite day excludes the night, | |
| And pleasures banish pain. | |
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| There everlasting spring abides, | 5 |
| And never-withering flowers; | |
| Death, like a narrow sea, divides | |
| This heavenly land from ours. | |
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| Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood | |
| Stand dressed in living green; | 10 |
| So to the Jews old Canaan stood, | |
| While Jordan rolled between. | |
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| But timorous mortals start and shrink | |
| To cross this narrow sea, | |
| And linger shivering on the brink, | 15 |
| And fear to launch away. | |
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| Oh! could we make our doubts remove, | |
| Those gloomy doubts that rise, | |
| And see the Canaan that we love | |
| With unbeclouded eyes— | 20 |
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| Could we but climb where Moses stood, | |
| And view the landscape o’er, | |
| Not Jordan’s stream, nor death’s cold flood | |
| Should fright us from the shore. | | | | |
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