s;
All form one flock, God's flock; all yield Him praise
By joy or pain, still tending toward the prize.
Joy speaks in praises there, and sings and flies
Where no night is, exulting all its days;
Here, pain finds solace, for, behold, it prays;
In both love lives the life that never dies.
Here life is the beginning of our death,
And death the starting-point whence life ensues;
Surely our life is death, our death is life:
Nor need we lay to heart our peace or strife,
But calm in faith and patience breathe the breath
God gave, to take again when He shall choose.
ALL SAINTS.
They are flocking from the East
And the West,
They are flocking from the North
And the South,
Every moment setting forth
From realm of snake or lion,
Swamp or sand,
Ice or burning;
Greatest and least,
Palm in hand
And praise in mouth,
They are flocking up the path
To their rest,
Up the path that hath
No returning.
Up the steeps of Zion
They are mounting,
Coming, coming,
Throngs beyond man's counting;
With a sound
Like innumerable bees
Swarming, humming
Where flowering trees
Many-tinted,
Many-scented,
All alike abound
With honey,--
With a swell
Like a blast upswaying unrestrainable
From a shadowed dell
To the hill-tops sunny,--
With a thunder
Like the ocean when in strength
Breadth and length
It sets to shore;
More and more
Waves on waves redoubled pour
Leaping flashing to the shore
(Unlike the under
Drain of ebb that loseth ground
For all its roar.)
They are thronging
From the East and West,
From the North and South,
Saints are thronging, loving, longing,
To their land
Of rest,
Palm in hand
And praise in mouth.
"TAKE CARE OF HIM."
"Thou whom I love, for whom I died,
Lovest thou Me, My bride?"--
Low on my knees I love Thee, Lord,
Believed in and adored.
"That I love thee the proof is plain:
How dost thou love again?"--
In prayer, in toil, in earthly loss,
In a long-carried cross.
"Yea, thou dost love: yet one adept
Brings more for Me to accept."--
I mould my will to match with Thine,
My wishes I resign.
"Thou givest much: then give the whole
For solace
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