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Title: An Hymn
Author: James Avis Bartley [
More Titles by Bartley]
To him whose soul is locked and bolted fast,
By lust and guilt against the entrance there,
Of heavenly light; whose soul is over-cast
By mists of sin and fogs of black despair;
The meaning of these worlds, not understood,
Becomes a dark and cabalistic book;
He not perceives that He who made, is good,
And that, His love was writ in every nook.
Dark, dark his every view of actual things,
The diamond shines with faint, unmeaning ray;
What use or beauty hath the bird's gay wings?
What glory, worlds that sweep through space away?
His ear is barred against the glorious song,
Which Nature chants, ne'er wearying, to her God;
The planetary paeans, borne along
Through God's high vault, descend upon a clod.
Oh fool of fools, and wretched man is he,
Who breathes his life in this untutored state;
And, in that world to come, how dread will be
His startled soul's at last awakened fate.
But, unto him, whose scales have fallen away,
Whose deafness has been healed by Love Divine;
A flood of music gushes in foraye,
And all God's works, with deathless lustre, shine.
The diamond hath a beam that, conquering, vies;
The bird's gay wings assume yet gayer hues;
Brighter become the rainbow's gorgeous dyes,
Purer the evening and the morning dews.
Sweeter the choral song of groves and founts,
Grander the anthem of the starry spheres;
From God's vast universe, forever, mounts
A strain that charms his own and seraphs' ears.
Undaunted, he surveys the ocean rage,
With placid face, he feels the earthquake's shock,
He knows his Lord the fury will assuage,
His soul is safe, though earth's foundations rock.
The Omnipotent yet liveth! He will bear
The humble soul, on His parental breast;
And, when the last great throe the sky shall tear,
This soul upon His arm shall surely rest.
[The end]
James Avis Bartley's poem: Hymn
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