| |
| THAT clime is not like this dull clime of ours; | |
| All, all is brightness there; | |
| A sweeter influence breathes around its flowers, | |
| And a benigner air. | |
| No calm below is like that calm above, | 5 |
| No region here is like that realm of love; | |
| Earth’s softest spring ne’er shed so soft a light, | |
| Earth’s brightest summer never shone so bright. | |
| |
| That sky is not like this sad sky of ours, | |
| Tinged with earth’s change and care; | 10 |
| No shadow dims it, and no rain-cloud lowers; | |
| No broken sunshine there: | |
| One everlasting stretch of azure pours | |
| Its stainless splendor o’er those sinless shores; | |
| For there Jehovah shines with heavenly ray, | 15 |
| And Jesus reigns, dispensing endless day. | |
| |
| The dwellers there are not like those of earth,— | |
| No mortal stain they bear,— | |
| And yet they seem of kindred blood and birth; | |
| Whence and how came they there? | 20 |
| Earth was their native soil; from sin and shame, | |
| Through tribulation, they to glory came; | |
| Bond-slaves delivered from sin’s crushing load, | |
| Brands plucked from burning by the hand of God. | |
| |
| Yon robes of theirs are not like those below; | 25 |
| No angel’s half so bright; | |
| Whence came that beauty, whence that living glow, | |
| And whence that radiant white? | |
| Washed in the blood of the atoning Lamb, | |
| Fair as the light these robes of theirs became; | 30 |
| And now, all tears wiped off from every eye, | |
| They wander where the freshest pastures lie, | |
| Through all the nightless day of that unfading sky! | |
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