| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Georgian Verse. 1909. | | | | At Home in Heaven | | By James Montgomery (1771–1854) |
| | | ‘FOREVER with the Lord!’ | |
| Amen, so let it be; | |
| Life from the dead is in that word, | |
| ’Tis immortality. | |
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| Here in the body pent, | 5 |
| Absent from him I roam, | |
| Yet nightly pitch my moving tent | |
| A day’s march nearer home. | |
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| My Father’s house on high, | |
| Home of my soul, how near | 10 |
| At times, to faith’s foreseeing eye, | |
| Thy golden gates appear! | |
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| Ah! then my spirit faints | |
| To reach the land I love, | |
| The bright inheritance of saints, | 15 |
| Jerusalem above. | |
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| Yet clouds will intervene, | |
| And all my prospect flies; | |
| Like Noah’s dove, I flit between | |
| Rough seas and stormy skies. | 20 |
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| Anon the clouds dispart, | |
| The winds and waters cease, | |
| While sweetly o’er my gladden’d heart | |
| Expands the bow of peace. | |
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| Beneath its glowing arch, | 25 |
| Along the hallow’d ground, | |
| I see cherubic armies march, | |
| A camp of fire around. | |
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| I hear at morn and even, | |
| At noon and midnight hour, | 30 |
| The choral harmonies of heaven | |
| Earth’s Babel-tongues o’erpower. | |
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| Then, then I feel that he, | |
| Remember’d or forgot, | |
| The Lord, is never far from me, | 35 |
| Though I perceive him not. | | | | |
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