Classic Poem

Nay 'tis not that we fancied it,
This magic world of ours;
We thought its skies were only blue,
Its fields all sun and flowers.

Its streams all summer-bright and glad,
Its seas all smiles and calms;
Its path from youth to age, one long
Green avenue of palms.

But clouds came up with gloom and shade
Our sky was overcast,
The hot mist threw its blight around,
Sunshine and flowers went past.

Hopes perished, that had hung like wreaths
Around youth's buoyant brow,
And joys, like withered autumn leaves,
Dropped from the shaken bough.

Yet from these clouds comes forth the light,—
Light beaming from on high;
And from these faded flowers spring up
The flowers that can not die.

Far fairer is the land we seek,
A land without a tomb,
An everlasting resting-place,
A sure and quiet home.

Far sunnier than the hills of time
Are its eternal hills;
Far fresher than the rills of earth
Are its eternal rills.

No blight can fall upon its flowers,
No darkness fill its air,
It has a day forever bright,
For Christ, its sun, is there.

O Sun of love and peace, arise,
Thy light upon us beam;
For all this life is but a sleep,
And all this world a dream.