James Montgomery (1771 – 1854)
British editor and poet.
Return unto thy rest, my soul,
From all the wanderings of thy thought,
From sickness unto death made whole,
Safe through a thousand perils brought.
Beyond this vale of tears
There is a life above,
Unmeasured by the flight of years;
And all that life is love.
Prayer is the soul's sincere desire,
Uttered or unexpressed,—
The motion of a hidden fire
That trembles in the breast.
The nursery of brooding Pelicans,
The dormitory of their dead, had vanish'd,
And all the minor spots of rock and verdure,
The abodes of happy millions, were no more.
Prayer is the burden of a sigh,
The falling of a tear,
The upward glancing of an eye
When none but God is near.
Nor sink those stars in empty night:
They hide themselves in heaven's own light.
Friend after friend departs;
Who hath not lost a friend?
There is no union here of hearts
That finds not here an end.
Gashed with honourable scars,
Low in Glory's lap they lie;
Though they fell, they fell like stars,
Streaming splendour through the sky.
Baptize the nations! far and nigh,
The triumphs of the cross record
The name of Jesus glorify,
Till every people call Him Lord.
If God hath made this world so fair,
Where sin and death abound,
How beautiful beyond compare
Will paradise be found!
Once, in the flight of ages past,
There lived a man.
Hope against hope, and ask till ye receive.
When the good man yields his breath
(For the good man never dies).
Joys too exquisite to last,
And yet more exquisite when past.
Bliss in possession will not last;
Remembered joys are never past;
At once the fountain, stream, and sea,
They were, they are, they yet shall be.
Nimbly they seized and secreted their prey,
Alive and wriggling in the elastic net,
Which Nature hung beneath their grasping beaks;
Till, swoln with captures, the unwieldy burden
Clogg'd their slow flight, as heavily to land,
These mighty hunters of the deep return'd.
There on the cragged cliffs they perch'd at ease,
Gorging their hapless victims one by one;
Then full and weary, side by side, they slept,
Till evening roused them to the chase again.
Counts his sure gains, and hurries back for more.
Who that hath ever been
Could bear to be no more?
Yet who would tread again the scene
He trod through life before?
'T is not the whole of life to live,
Nor all of death to die.
Distinct as the billows, yet one as the sea.