And in the latter, which has all the vividness of an actual death-scene, as the husband and children from whom she must part are kneeling by the bed-side, the sufferer says:
“Oh! if earthly love could conquer
The mighty power of death,
His love would stay the current
Of my failing strength and breath;
And that voice whose loving fondness
Has been my earthly stay
Could half tempt me from the voices
That are calling me away.”
But at last they come nearer and sound louder, till they “drown all sounds of mortal birth,” and “in their wild triumphal sweetness,” lure her away from earth to Heaven.
[SACRED POEMS]
[ABRAHAM’S SACRIFICE.]
The noontide sun streamed brightly down
Moriah’s mountain crest,
The golden blaze of his vivid rays
Tinged sacred Jordan’s breast;
While towering palms and flowerets sweet,
Drooped low ’neath Syria’s burning heat.
In the sunny glare of the sultry air
Toiled up the mountain side
The Patriarch sage in stately age,
And a youth in health’s gay pride,
Bearing in eyes and in features fair
The stamp of his mother’s beauty rare.
She had not known when one rosy dawn,
Ere they started on their way,
She had smoothed with care his clustering hair,
And knelt with him to pray,
That his father’s hand and will alike
Were nerved at his young heart to strike.
The Heavenly Power that with such dower
Of love fills a mother’s heart,
Ardent and pure, that can all endure,
Of her life itself a part,
Knew too well that love beyond all price
To ask of her such a sacrifice.
Though the noble boy with laughing joy
Had borne up the mountain road
The altar wood, which in mournful mood
His sire had helped to load,
Type of Him who dragged up Calvary,
The cross on which he was doomed to die.