And gentiles from afar behold,
(Not as on Sinai's rocks of old),
GOD,-from eternity conceal'd,—
In his own light, on Thee reveal'd.
I love Thee,-when I hear thy voice
Bid a despairing world rejoice,
And loud from shore to shore proclaim,
In every tongue, Messiah's name;
That name, at which, from sea to sea,
All nations yet shall bow the knee.
I love Thee:-next to heaven above,
Land of my fathers! Thee I love;
And, rail thy slanderers as they will,
"Will all thy faults I love Thee" still:
For faults Thou hast, of heinous size;
Repent, renounce them, ere they rise
In judgment; lest thine ocean-wall
With boundless ruin round Thee fall,
And that, which was thy mightiest stay,
Sweep all thy rocks like sand away.
"Let me not have this gloomy view,
"About my room, around my bed;
"But morning roses, wet with dew,
"To cool my burning brows instead.
"As flow'rs that once in Eden
grew,
"Let them their fragrant spirits shed,
"And every day the sweets renew,
"Till I, a fading flower, am dead.
"Oh! let the herbs I loved to rear
"Give to my sense their perfumed breath;
"Let them be placed about my bier,
"And grace the gloomy house of death.
"I'll have my grave beneath an hill,
"Where, only Lucy's self shall know
"Where runs the pure pellucid rill
"Upon its gravelly bed below;
"There violets on the borders blow,
"And insects their soft light display,
"Till as the morning sun-beams glow,
"The cold phosphoric fires decay.