Sunlight is the shining of His face!
And look unto the gates of His high place
Beyond the sea,
For I know He is coming shortly
And when a shadow falls across the window
Of my room,
Where I am working my appointed task,
I lift my head to watch the door, and ask
If He is come.
And the angel answers sweetly
In my home,—
"Only a few more shadows
And He will come."
THE Day of the Lord is at hand, at hand :
Its storms roll up the sky :
The nations sleep starving on heaps of gold;
All dreamers toss and sigh:
The night is darkest before the morn;
When the pain is sorest the child is born,
And the Day of the Lord at hand.
Gather you, gather you, angels of God—
Freedom and Mercy and Truth;
Come! for the Earth is grown coward and old;
Come down, and renew us her youth.
Wisdom, Self-sacrifice, Daring, and Love,
Haste to the battlefield, stoop from above,
To the Day of the Lord at hand.
Gather you, gather you, hounds of hell-
Famine and Plague and War;
Idleness, Bigotry, Cant, and Misrule,
Gather and fall in the snare !
Hireling and Mammonite, Bigot and Knave,
Crawl to the battlefield, sneak to your grave,
In the Day of the Lord at hand.
Who would sit down and sigh for a lost age of gold,
While the Lord of all ages is here?
True hearts will leap up at the trumpet of God,
And those who can suffer, can dare.
Each old age of gold was an iron age too,
And the meekest of saints may find stern work to do,
In the Day of the Lord at hand.
IN a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
My branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity:
The north cannot undo them,
With a sleety whistle thro' them;
Nor frozen thawings glue them
From budding at the prime.
In a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy brook,
Thy bubblings ne'er remember
Apollo's summer look :
But with a sweet forgetting,
They stay their crystal fretting,
Never, never petting
About the frozen time.
Ah! would 'twere so with many
A gentle girl and boy!
But were there ever any
Writhed not at passed joy?
To know the change and feel it,
When there is none to heal it,
Nor numbed sense to steal it,
Was never said in rhyme.
GOD, who at sundry times in manners many
Spake to the fathers and is speaking still,
Eager to find if ever or if any
Souls will obey and hearken to His will :
Who that one moment has the least descried Him,
Dimly and faintly, hidden and afar,
Doth not despise all excellence beside Him,
Pleasures and powers that are not and that are:-
God, who whatever frenzy of our fretting
Vexes sad life to spoil and to destroy,
Lendeth an hour for peace and for forgetting,
Setteth in pain the jewel of His joy :-
Gentle and faithful, tyrannous and tender,
Ye that have known Him, is He sweet to know?
Softly He touches, for the reed is slender,
Wisely enkindles, for the flame is low.
Hark! what a sound, and too divine for bearing,
Stirs on the earth and trembles in the air!
Is it the thunder of the Lord's appearing?
Is it the music of His people's prayer?
Surely He cometh, and a thousand voices
Shout to the saints, and to the deaf are dumb; Surely He cometh, and the earth rejoices
Glad in His coming who hath sworn, I come.
This hath He done, and shall we not adore Him? This shall He do, and can we still despair? Come let us quickly fling ourselves before Him, Cast at His feet the burthen of our care,
Flash from our eyes the glow of our thanksgiving,
Glad and regretful, confident and calm,
Then thro' all life and what is after living
Thrill to the tireless music of a psalm.
Yea thro' life, death, thro' sorrow and thro' sinning,
He shall suffice me, for He hath sufficed :
Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning,
Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ.
FREDERIC MYERS, Saint Paul.
THE FURIES' CHORUS.
(Pursuing Orestes.)
WEAVE the wild dance; awake the song;
Awake the strain severe,
And pour on mortal ear,
What mighty honours to our race belong.
Still in justice find we pleasure,
Meeting right in strictest measure;
He, whose hand from blood is pure,
From our wrath may rest secure ;
But the sinner who would fain
Cover murder's crimson stain,
Still shall find his steps pursued
By inquisitors for blood,
Due to the unavenged dead
Our malison devotes his head.
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