Sweet Saviour, since the time thy human feet
Trod thirty years our parched and dusty ways,
How hath the wilderness of life grown sweet
With flowers and warbled praise!
How hath the heavy mist that wrapt us round,
The weary mist of tears and soul-wrung sighs,
Lifted, and bared to us the blue profound
Of God's far quiet skies!
And more than all, how hath a gracious change,
To poor scared men that slunk with fluttering breath,
Passed o'er the face, that erst was stern and strange,
Of thy strong angel, Death!
Lo, through the mazes of a tangled wood,
Nowhither bound, we groped through vistas dim,
While shadowlike amid the shadows stood
Old Death, the archer grim.
We deemed his face was pitiless and blind;
Shot all at random seemed each whirring dart,
Yet none did fail a resting-place to find
In some wrung, quivering heart.
And there, with writhen limbs and sightless stare,
Down in the drenched grass the victim lay,
What erst was man, erect and tall and fair,
Now shrunk and fading clay.
And over him in dull and hopeless pain
The mourners stood, sore stricken and perplext:
"He lieth prone; he will not rise again;
And who shall fall the next?"
O sweet changed face! We see, we know him now, —
Rent the thick mist that blurred our straining ken, —
Death: of all angels round the throne that bow,
Most pitiful to men!
Through the dusk chamber where the watchers weep
Slowly he moves with calm and noiseless tread,
And o'er the weary one that longs for sleep
He bends his gracious head.
"Poor eyes!" he saith, "long have ye wept and waked;
I come to bid your tears and vigils cease."
"Poor heart!" he saith, "long hast thou yearned and ached;
I come to give thee peace."
"Be of good cheer," he saith, "world-weary waif.
One sharp, swift step, and all the way is trod:
Through the heaped darkness I will lead thee safe
To the great light of God."
A sharp, sweet silence smites the tingling ears.
How snow-like falls the peace upon his brow!
Hark! happy mourners, smiling through their tears,
Whisper, "He sleepeth now!"