Poems (Stephens)/Hereafter

by Eliza Jane Stephens

For works with similar titles, see Hereafter.

HEREAFTER;

We can but wonder, with our feeble senses,
 How flowers of fairest form and purest shade
Can bud and blossom all unceasingly,
 And never suffer blight and never fade.

Or how sweet groves in all their strength and grandeur,
 And clothed in verdure picked from every clime,
Can live from year to year nor lose their beauty,
 Before that arch destroyer, ruthless Time.

While from the hills flow cool and sparkling fountains,
 With which the streams of earth could never vie,
And offered free for every one that's thirsty,
 Yet never troubled, neither ever dry.

And all these bills, that are for everlasting,
 Are resting in a most effulgent light,
And gloomy clouds will never round them hover,
 And never on them fall the shades of night.

And will this spirit, so afraid of leaving
 A little mass of perishable clay,
Awake in presence of the great Creator
 A living form that never shall decay?

And can there be a love that's never waning,
 A friendship pure that never will grow cold,
A beauty that's supreme and never fading,
 And youthful strength that never shall grow old?

And stranger yet, will sin have no dominion,
 Nor longer bind us with its galling chain?
Shall we to more be tempted unto yielding,
 And know no more of sorrow, guilt and pain?

Ah. this is only in the great hereafter—
 To mortal senses there must be denied
A perfect knowledge of the heavenly country
 And joys that wait upon the justified.