Pocahontas and Other Poems (New York)/Sabbath Meditations
SABBATH MEDITATIONS.
Toss'd on the angry deep, with riven sails,
The bark, long struggling 'gainst the tempest's wrath,
Meets the rich perfume breathed from land-born gales,
And skims more lightly o'er her billowy path;
While the glad sailor marks the misty line
Where his loved native hills the blue horizon join.
Spent, on his broken raft, the swimmer lies,
A noteless speck mid ocean's stormy spray,
While round his head the shrieking seagull flies,
And warns her comrades of the expected prey;
See! see! the lifeboat! Lo, its deck he gains,
And mid protecting friends forgets his fearful pains.
The traveller, faint amid the desert sands,
Thinks of his native clime with bitter tear,
Fast by his side his drooping camel stands,
Hark to the cry of hope! a fountain near!
A green oasis mid the burning plain,
And 'neath the palm-tree shade he dreams of home again.
And art not thou, O glorious Sabbath morn,
A lifeboat to the outcast on the main?
A sight of home to mariner forlorn?
A sound of waters mid the burning plain?
Bear to my soul thy blessing from on high,
That dayspring of our God whose beams shall never die.
With holy words of psalmist and of seer,
With penitential prayers in secret born,
With chant and worship of the temple dear,
Come thou to me, O consecrated morn;
Descend and touch devotion's slumbering chord,
And tell to listening faith the rising of her Lord.
Yes, raise me o'er the dust and care of life,
A little way towards that celestial seat,
Where, freed for aye from vanity and strife,
The "just made perfect" in communion meet;
Show me their vestments gleaming from the sky,
Pour through heaven's opening gate their echoed minstrelsy,
And I will thank thee, though to earth I turn,
And all too soon from thy bless'd precepts stray,
Though in my breast its fever-thirst should burn,
And storm or shipwreck daunt my venturous way,
Still will I grasp thee as a golden chain,
And bind thee to my heart until we meet again.