To me ‘tis but the past is veiled:
The world that mocks with joys that fleet;
The “Egypt” that so long has failed
To make its “troubled waters”[124] sweet:
The world with all its sins and cares,
Its sorrows gained and graces lost;
The garden of a thousand snares,
The barren field of blight and frost.
But shines the future clear as truth:
A few swift years of prayer and peace,
Where hearts may know perennial youth,
And virtues evermore increase:
And then my Lord, my only love,
Shall come, and lift the veil, and say:
“Arise, all fair, my spouse, my dove!
The rain is over—haste, away![125]
“The rain is o’er, the winter gone,
That sun and summer seemed to thee.
If sweet the toilsome journey done,
How sweeter now thy rest shall be!”
[123] “My Beloved is mine, and I am his.”
[124] Jer. ii. 18.
[125] Cant. ii. 10, 11.