Quotes
Quotes - Montgomery
When the good man yields his breath
(For the good man never dies).
Gashed with honourable scars,
Low in Glory's lap they lie;
Though they fell, they fell like stars,
Streaming splendour through the sky.
Distinct as the billows, yet one as the sea.
Once, in the flight of ages past,
There lived a man.
Counts his sure gains, and hurries back for more.
Hope against hope, and ask till ye receive.
Joys too exquisite to last,
And yet more exquisite when past.
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.
Friend after friend departs;
Who hath not lost a friend?
There is no union here of hearts
That finds not here an end.
Nor sink those stars in empty night:
They hide themselves in heaven's own light.
'T is not the whole of life to live,
Nor all of death to die.
Beyond this vale of tears
There is a life above,
Unmeasured by the flight of years;
And all that life is love.
Night is the time to weep,
To wet with unseen tears
Those graves of memory where sleep
The joys of other years.
Who that hath ever been
Could bear to be no more?
Yet who would tread again the scene
He trod through life before?
Here in the body pent,
Absent from Him I roam,
Yet nightly pitch my moving tent
A day's march nearer home.
If God hath made this world so fair,
Where sin and death abound,
How beautiful beyond compare
Will paradise be found!
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.
Prayer is the soul's sincere desire,
Uttered or unexpressed,--
The motion of a hidden fire
That trembles in the breast.
Prayer is the burden of a sigh,
The falling of a tear,
The upward glancing of an eye
When none but God is near.
And thou, vast ocean! on whose awful face
Time's iron feet can print no ruin-trace.
The soul aspiring pants its source to mount,
As streams meander level with their fount.
The solitary monk who shook the world
From pagan slumber, when the gospel trump
Thundered its challenge from his dauntless lips
In peals of truth.
Ye quenchless stars! so eloquently bright,
Untroubled sentries of the shadowy night.
Golden Bill! Golden Bill! Lo, the peep of day; All the air is cool and still, From the elm-tree on the hill, Chant away: . . . . Let thy loud and welcome lay Pour alway Few notes but strong.
The Rose has but a Summer reign, The daisy never dies.
