Zinzendorff and Other Poems/The Sabbath
THE SABBATH.
The world is full of toil;
Toil bids the traveler roam,
It binds the laborer to the soil,
The student to his tome;
The beasts of burden sigh,
O'erladen and opprest,
The Sabbath lifts its banner high,
And gives the weary rest.
The world is full of care;
The haggard brow is wrought
In furrows as of fix'd despair
And check'd the heavenward thought,
But with indignant grace
The Sabbath's chastening tone,
Drives money-changers from the place
Which God doth call his own.
The world is full of grief;
Sorrows o'er sorrows roll,
Even hope that promises relief
Doth sometimes pierce the soul;
But see the Sabbath's bound
Bears Mercy's holy seal,
A balm of Gilead for the wound
That man is weak to heal.
The world is full of sin;
Its tide, deceptive rolls,
The unwary to its breast to win,
And whelm unstable souls;
The Sabbath's beacon tells
Of reefs and wrecks below,
And warns, tho' gay the billow swells,
Beneath, are death and woe.
O glorious world! where none
With fruitless labor sigh,
Where care doth wring no lingering groan,
And grief no agony;
Where Sin with fatal arts
Hath never forg'd her chains,
But deep enthron'd in angel-hearts,
One endless Sabbath reigns.