James Montgomery

Prayer is the burden of a sigh, The falling of a tear, The upward glancing of an eye When none but God is near.

Prayer is the soul's sincere desire, Uttered or unexpressed,— The motion of a hidden fire That trembles in the breast.

Return unto thy rest, my soul, From all the wanderings of thy thought, From sickness unto death made whole, Safe through a thousand perils brought.

If God hath made this world so fair, Where sin and death abound, How beautiful beyond compare Will paradise be found!

Here in the body pent, Absent from Him I roam, Yet nightly pitch my moving tent A day's march nearer home.

Who that hath ever been Could bear to be no more? Yet who would tread again the scene He trod through life before?

Night is the time to weep, To wet with unseen tears Those graves of memory where sleep The joys of other years.

Beyond this vale of tears There is a life above, Unmeasured by the flight of years; And all that life is love.

'T is not the whole of life to live, Nor all of death to die.

Nor sink those stars in empty night: They hide themselves in heaven's own light.

Friend after friend departs; Who hath not lost a friend? There is no union here of hearts That finds not here an end.

Bliss in possession will not last; Remembered joys are never past; At once the fountain, stream, and sea, They were, they are, they yet shall be.

Joys too exquisite to last, And yet more exquisite when past.

Hope against hope, and ask till ye receive.

Counts his sure gains, and hurries back for more.

Once, in the flight of ages past, There lived a man.

Distinct as the billows, yet one as the sea.

Gashed with honourable scars, Low in Glory's lap they lie; Though they fell, they fell like stars, Streaming splendour through the sky.

When the good man yields his breath (For the good man never dies).

The nursery of brooding Pelicans, The dormitory of their dead, had vanish'd, And all the minor spots of rock and verdure, The abodes of happy millions, were no more.

Nature's prime favourites were the Pelicans; High-fed, long-lived, and sociable and free.