Zinzendorff and Other Poems/"Is it well with the child?"
"Is it well with the child? And she answered, It is well."—2 Kings iv. 26.
"Is it well with the child?"—And she answer'd, "'Tis well;"
But I gaz'd on the mother who spake,
For the tremulous tear as it sprang from its cell,
Bade a doubt in my bosom awake;
And I mark'd that the bloom from her features had fled,
So late in their loveliness rare,
And the hue of the watcher that bends o'er the dead,
Was gathering in pensiveness there.
"Is it well with the child?"—And she answer'd, "'Tis well."
I remember'd its beauty and grace,
When the tones of its laughter did tunefully swell
In affection's delighted embrace:
And thro' their long fringe, as it rose from its sleep,
Its eyes beam'd a rapturous ray,
And I wonder'd that silence should settle so deep
O'er the home of a being so gay.
"Is it well with the child?" And she said, "It is well."
It hath tasted of sickness and pain,
Of the pang and the groan, and the gasp it might tell,
It never will suffer again.
In my dreams, as an angel, it stands by my side,
In the garments of glory and love;
And I hear its glad lays to the Saviour who died,
'Mid the choir of the blessed above.