Quote of the Day

Our home!  What spirit has not felt the charm,

The untold meaning, hidden in that word?

Can any not recall one throb of joy

That swell'd the bosom when that name was heard?

Far banished from the beings most beloved

Strangers and pilgrims on a foreign soil;

Where even that we have is scarcely ours,

Claimants to nothing but to care and toil

Chill'd by a rugged and ungenial clime,

Despised as aliens, taunted and disclaimed,

What brilliant visions animate the soul,

Whene'er our country or our home is named

Heaven is our home - our best beloved is their,

And there is all that we can call our own;

Treasures far other than earth's borrowed joys,

There are our wealth, our scepter, and our crown.

What then is death?  Is it the mournful shroud,

The soldered coffin, and the sable train?

The brief inscription, and the moldering stone

That tells the careless stranger, we have been?

Mistaken emblems of unreal ill!!

Phantoms that pale the conscious sinner's cheek;

Spectres!  That haunt us in life's gayest hours!

When Christians die, how false the tale you speak.

Far other visions crowd his closing eye;

Death comes to him a messenger of love-

He hears angelic hosts their songs prepare

To greet his coming to the realms above

He sees the Savior stand with hand outstretched

To wipe the tears of sorrow from his eye;

He hears the Father from his lofty throne,

Invite him to his mansion in the sky.

Behind him he beholds earth's thousand ills,

With all the folly of its mad pursuits;

And sin disrobed of passion's artful guise,

Stands forth confessed with all its bitter fruits.

Before- what mortal accents may not tell

Something, life's grosser vision cannot see,

The bright beginnings of eternal bliss,

The gleam of coming immortality!

 

Caroline Wilson