Hymn For All Saints Day In The Morning Poem by Henry Alford

Stand up before your God
You army bold and bright,
Saints martyrs and confessors
In your robes of white;
The Church below doth challenge you
To an act of praise:
Ready with mirth in all the earth
Her matin song to raise.

Stand up before your God
In beautiful array,
Make ready all your instruments
The while we mourn and pray;
For we must stay to mourn and pray
Some prelude to our song;
The fear of death has clogged our breath
And our foes are swift and strong.

But ye before your God
Are hushed from all alarm,
Out through the grave and gate of death
Ye have past into the calm;
Your fight is done, your victory won,
Through peril and toil and blood:
Among the slain on the battle plain
We buried ye where ye stood.

Stand up before your God,
Although we cannot hear
The new song he hath taught you
With our fleshly ear;
Our bosoms burn that hymn to learn,
And from the church below
Even while we sing, on heavenward wing
Some happy souls shall go.

Ye stand before your God,
But we press onward still,
The soldiers of his army,
The servants of his will:
A captive band in foreign land
Long ages we have been;
But our dearest theme and our fondest dream
Is the home we have not seen.

We soon shall meet our God,
The hour is waxing on,
The day--spring from on high hath risen,
And the night is spent and gone;
The light of Earth it had its birth
And it shall have its doom;
The Sons of Earth they are few in birth
But many in the tomb.