I HAVE not felt, o’er seas of sand,

The rocking of the desert bark;

Nor laved at Hebron’s fount my hand,

By Hebron’s palm-trees cool and dark;

Nor pitched my tent at even-fall,

On dust where Job of old has lain,

Nor dreamed beneath its canvas wall,

The dream of Jacob o’er again.

One vast world-page remains unread;

How shine the stars in Chaldea’s sky,

How sounds the reverent pilgrim’s tread,

How beats the heart with God so nigh!

How round gray arch and column lone

The spirit of the old time broods,

And sighs in all the winds that moan

Along the sandy solitudes!

In thy tall cedars, Lebanon,

I have not heard the nations’ cries,

Nor seen thy eagles stooping down

Where buried Tyre in ruin lies.

The Christian’s prayer I have not said

In Tadmor’s temples of decay,

Nor startled, with my dreary tread,

The waste where Memnon’s empire lay.

Nor have I, from thy hallowed tide,

O Jordan! heard the low lament,

Like that sad wail along thy side

Which Israel’s mournful prophet sent!

Nor thrilled within that grotto lone

Where, deep in night, the Bard of Kings

Felt hands of fire direct his own,

And sweep for God the conscious strings.

I have not climbed to Olivet,

Nor laid me where my Saviour lay,

And left His trace of tears as yet

By angel eyes unwept away;

Nor watched, at midnight’s solemn time,

The garden where His prayer and groan,

Wrung by His sorrow and our crime,

Rose to One listening ear alone.

I have not kissed the rock-hewn grot

Where in His mother’s arms He lay,

Nor knelt upon the sacred spot

Where last His footsteps pressed the clay;

Nor looked on that sad mountain head,

Nor smote my sinful breast, where wide

His arms to fold the world He spread,

And bowed His head to bless—and died!

1848.