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
