| |
| OH! see yon glowing occident, | |
| With crimson, gold, and purple blent— | |
| How high and wide the pageant’s spread, | |
| How far its gorgeous glories shed; | |
| Not all that the earth has of brightest and best. | 5 |
| Can vie with the splendors of yonder west. | |
| |
| Oh! could we but mount to that golden clime, | |
| And traverse those pathways of purple light, | |
| To the perishing things of earth and time, | |
| We ’d bid a long, and a glad “good night!” | 10 |
| There, ’mid the glow of parting day, | |
| Through amaranthine fields we’d stray, | |
| Drinking in, with ravish’d ears, | |
| The music of the circling spheres; | |
| Gazing on glories of brighter shine, | 15 |
| Than the richest gems of Golconda’s mine; | |
| Resting in bowers of sweeter perfume, | |
| Than the “gardens of Gul,” in their fairest bloom. | |
| |
| Fond enthusiast! see—it fades, | |
| Even upon thy charmed sight; | 20 |
| Lost ’mid evening’s gather’d shades, | |
| Dying with the dying light; | |
| Thus ever fades earth’s loveliest, | |
| Thus dies the brightest and the best. | |
| |
| I ’ve seen, in blooming loveliness, | 25 |
| The youthful maiden’s angel form; | |
| I ’ve seen, in towering stateliness, | |
| The hero, breasting battle’s storm; | |
| The canker-worm of hopelessness | |
| Has blighted all her bloom; | 30 |
| War’s iron bolt, in ruthlessness, | |
| Has sped him to the tomb: | |
| Thus ever fades earth’s loveliest, | |
| Thus dies the brightest and the best. | |
| Then count not maiden’s loveliness, | 35 |
| Nor hero’s towering stateliness, | |
| Mortal, dare be wise: | |
| Let not thy soul’s aspiring rest | |
| On gilded east, or glowing west— | |
| Look beyond the skies! | 40 |
| There, far above that line of light, | |
| Which bounds thy dim and shorten’d sight, | |
| In never-dying glories, shine | |
| The splendors of the world divine. | |
| The new Jerusalem, the holy, | 45 |
| Whose foundations are of gold; | |
| Garnish’d with the radiant glory, | |
| Of thousand precious stones untold; | |
| And the rainbow-circled throne, | |
| On its fiery axles wheeling; | 50 |
| And Jehovah’s own Zion, the holy mount; | |
| And the water of life, in its crystal fount; | |
| And the tree, with its leaves for the nation’s healing: | |
| Such as these, but numberless, | |
| The glories of that heavenly place, | 55 |
| Where sorrow is never known, nor night, | |
| For GOD and the LAMB are its joy and light. | |
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