John Bowring Poems

Ours is a lovely world! Where'er
We turn our eyes 'tis bright and fair:
The seasons in their courses fall,
And bring successive joys. The sea,
...

I heard a voice which sweetly said,
'Happy, thrice happy are the dead
Who from their earthly labours rest-
They slumber well-for they are blest.'
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They are not gone-whom death's dark shroud
Hath curtained from our mortal eye;
They are not gone:
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Whither, whither shall we go?
For the word of life is Thine;
Nothing of our way we know
If Thy light refuse to shine:
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Come Thy kingdom! of all blessings,
Of all prayers the first is this;
All heaven's hopes,-all earth's possessings,
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Father, I bend before Thy sacred shrine,
In grateful reverence to Thy will divine,
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'Sing no more the song of Moses!'
Sing a loftier, louder lay!
For the time of twilight closes,
And then dawns th'eternal day.
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If to deny that God hath cursed the child,
And doomed it to perdition-to deny
That He, who sits and reigns above the sky,
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That Christ who o'er His Lazarus wept,
And said, 'The dead again shall rise!'
Is 'the first fruits of them that slept,'
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Spring is but another birth,
From the grave of earlier springs,
Which to renovated earth
Other resurrection brings.
...