Sweet Saviour, since the time thy human feet
⁠Trod thirty years our parched and dusty ways,
How hath the wilderness of life grown sweet
⁠With flowers and warbled praise!

How hath the heavy mist that wrapt us round,
⁠The weary mist of tears and soul-wrung sighs,
Lifted, and bared to us the blue profound
⁠Of God's far quiet skies!

And more than all, how hath a gracious change,
⁠To poor scared men that slunk with fluttering breath,
Passed o'er the face, that erst was stern and strange,
⁠Of thy strong angel, Death!

Lo, through the mazes of a tangled wood,
⁠Nowhither bound, we groped through vistas dim,
While shadowlike amid the shadows stood
⁠Old Death, the archer grim.

We deemed his face was pitiless and blind;
⁠Shot all at random seemed each whirring dart,
Yet none did fail a resting-place to find
⁠In some wrung, quivering heart.

And there, with writhen limbs and sightless stare,
⁠Down in the drenched grass the victim lay,
What erst was man, erect and tall and fair,
⁠Now shrunk and fading clay.

And over him in dull and hopeless pain
⁠The mourners stood, sore stricken and perplext:
"He lieth prone; he will not rise again;
⁠And who shall fall the next?"

O sweet changed face! We see, we know him now, —
⁠Rent the thick mist that blurred our straining ken, —
Death: of all angels round the throne that bow,
⁠Most pitiful to men!

Through the dusk chamber where the watchers weep
⁠Slowly he moves with calm and noiseless tread,
And o'er the weary one that longs for sleep
⁠He bends his gracious head.

"Poor eyes!" he saith, "long have ye wept and waked;
⁠I come to bid your tears and vigils cease."
"Poor heart!" he saith, "long hast thou yearned and ached;
⁠I come to give thee peace."

"Be of good cheer," he saith, "world-weary waif.
⁠One sharp, swift step, and all the way is trod:
Through the heaped darkness I will lead thee safe
⁠To the great light of God."

A sharp, sweet silence smites the tingling ears.
⁠How snow-like falls the peace upon his brow!
Hark! happy mourners, smiling through their tears,
⁠Whisper, "He sleepeth now!"

Out of the unknown into the known,
⁠From the infinite sea to the sea of time
Cometh a voyager, sailing alone,
⁠Steering with confidence all sublime
Straight to the land of joy and rest:
The tropic isle of his mother's breast.

Little he cares whether hall or cot
⁠Shelter his shallop from wind and wet;
Cotton or velvet, he heedeth not —
⁠Peasant or lord — they are nothing yet!
Crown for head and sceptre for hand
Are toys and playthings in baby-land.

Oh, but he finds out wonderful things!
⁠The dome of his cradle high and wide;
The drowsy sense when the mother sings;
⁠The swinging ebb of the outward tide,
Which somewhere underneath him seems
To drift him into the land of dreams!

Then wide awake, from the distance dim
⁠In far, mysterious realms of space,
A soft, bright moon doth rise for him:
⁠The tender round of his mother's face.
In this wide world finds he charm on charm,
As he rides round the room on his mother's arm.

Smiles and tears in your bonny eyes,
⁠Shine and cloud on your coral lips,
Little explorer, out of the skies,
⁠Searching out truth with your finger-tips!
You know not yet, as we old folks know,
There is nothing new in this world below!

Ah! What disdainful looks you cast —
⁠Captain, who sailed from the unknown shore!
Rogue's eyes answer me: "Not so fast,
⁠Filling my ears with your well-worn lore;
Baby or fairy or sprite or elf,
You’ll find I am something new myself!"