Mary’s Birthday.
She is at rest,1
In God’s own presence blest,2
Whom, while with us, we loved to greet this day ;3
Her birthdays o’er,4
She counts the years no more ;5
On her hath beam’d the light of heaven’s one nightless
day.6
day.6
When we would raise7
A hymn of birthday praise,8
The music of our hearts is faint and low ;9
Fear, doubt, and sin,10
Make dissonance within ;11
And pure soul-melody no child of earth may know.12
That strange “ new song,”13
Amid a white-robed throng,14
Is gushing from her harp in living tone ;15
Her seraph voice,16
Tuned only to rejoice,17
Floats upward to the emerald-arched throne.*18
No passing cloud19
Her loveliness may shroud,20
The beauty of her youth may never fail ;21
No line of care22
Her healed brow may wear,23
The joy-gleam of her eye no dimness e’er may veil.24
* Rev. iv. 3.
No stain is there25
Upon the robes they wear,26
Within the gates of pearl which she hath pass’d ;27
Like woven light,28
All beautiful and bright,29
Eternity no shade upon those robes may cast.30
No sin-born thought31
May in that home be wrought,32
To trouble the clear fountain of her heart ;33
No tear, no sigh,34
No pain, no death be nigh35
Where she hath enter’d in, no more to “ know in part.”36
Her faith is sight,37
Her hope is full delight,38
The shadowy veil of time is rent in twain :39
Her untold bliss—40
What thought can follow this !41
To her to live was Christ, to die indeed is gain.42
Her eyes have seen43
The bruisèd Nazarene,44
In blood-dipp’d vesture gloriously array’d :45
No earth-breathed haze46
May e’er becloud her gaze—47
She sees Him face to face on whom her guilt was laid.48
A little while,49
And they whose loving smile50
Had melted ’neath the touch of lonely woe,51
Shall reach her home,52
Beyond the star-built dome :53
Her anthem they shall swell, her joy they too shall know.54