And corpses, jostled 'neath the moon, Be pitiful, O God! The plague of gold strikes far and near, And deep and strong it enters: This purple chimar which we wear, Makes madder than the centaur's. Our thoughts grow blank, our words grow strange; We cheer the pale gold-diggers— Each soul is worth so much on 'Change, And marked, like sheep, with figures. The rail-cars snort from strand to strand, The poor die mute—with starving gaze The happy children come to us, And look up in our faces: They ask us-Was it thus, and thus, We cannot speak: - we see anew And feel our mother's smile press through The kisses she is giving. We sit on hills our childhood wist, Woods, hamlets, streams, beholding: The city's golden spire it was, When hope and health were strongest, But now it is the churchyard grass, We look upon the longest. We have no strength for crying: No strength, no need! Then, Soul of mine, Lo! in the depth of God's Divine, The Son adjures the Father BE PITIFUL, O GOD! OH! WHY SHOULD THE SPIRIT OF MORTAL BE PROUD? Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud? The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade, Be scattered around and together be laid; And the young and the old, and the low and the high The infant a mother attended and loved; The mother that infant's affection who proved; The husband that mother and infant who blessed; Each, all, are away to their dwellings of Rest. The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye, Shone beauty and pleasure, her triumphs are by; And the memory of those who loved her and praised, The hand of the king that the sceptre hath borne; The eye of the sage and the heart of the brave, The peasant, whose lot was to sow and to reap; The herdsman, who climbed with his goats up the steep; The beggar, who wandered in search of his bread, Have faded away with the grass that we tread. The saint who enjoyed the communion of heaven, So the multitude goes, like the flower or the weed For we are the same our fathers have been: The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think; To the life we are clinging they also would cling: They loved, but the story we cannot unfold; They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold; They died, aye! they died; we things that are now, Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage road. Yea! hope and despondency, pleasure and pain, We mingle together in sunshine and rain; 'Tis the wink of the eye, 'tis the draught of a breath, From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud, "We, which do believe, have entered into rest!" The soul hath many an "upper room" of sadness "Peace!" All unheeded is the tempest sweeping "We enter into rest. The Sabbath keeping" May be begun in hearts afar from home, E'en though our eyes may be well used to weeping, Unseen by human eyes, the light is beaming, "We have believed" we trust the word unfailing, And here and now, "do enter into rest; "We have believed " -no foe our peace assailing, Can break the soul's repose on Jesus' breast. |