R A PSALM OF LIFE. 63 A PSALM OF LIFE. TELL me not, in mournful numbers, "Life is but an empty dream!" For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest ! And the grave is not its goal; Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, In the world's broad field of battle, In the bivouac of Life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle! "REJOICE EVERMORE.” 65 "REJOICE EVERMORE." BUT how shall we be glad? We that are journeying through a vale of tears, Angels, that ever stand. Within the presence-chamber, and there raise Or they whose strife is o'er Who all their weary length of life have trod, But we who wander here We who are exiled in this gloomy place, Bid us lament and mourn; Bid us that we go mourning all the day, And we will find it easy to obey, Of our best things forlorn; F But not that we be glad. If it be true the mourners are the blest, I spake, and thought to weep,— When lo! as day from night, As day from out the womb of night forlorn, Yet was not that by this Excluded; at the coming of that joy Fled not that grief, nor did that grief destroy But side by side they flow, Two fountains flowing from one smitten heart, Two fountains from one source, Of which from two such neighbouring sources ran, That aye for him who shall unseal the one The other flows perforce. |