WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

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HEAVEN.

  That clime is not like this dull clime of ours;
    All, all is brightness there;
  A sweeter influence breathes around its flowers,
    And a benigner air. 
  No calm below is like that calm above,
  No region here is like that realm of love;
  Earth’s softest spring ne’er shed so soft a light,
  Earth’s brightest summer never shone so bright.

  That sky is not like this sad sky of ours,
    Tinged with earth’s change and care;
  No shadow dims it, and no rain-cloud lowers;
    No broken sunshine there: 
  One everlasting stretch of azure pours
  Its stainless splendor o’er those sinless shores;
  For there Jehovah shines with heavenly ray,
  And Jesus reigns, dispensing endless day.

  The dwellers there are not like those of earth,—­
    No mortal stain they bear,—­
  And yet they seem of kindred blood and birth;
    Whence and how came they there? 
  Earth was their native soil; from sin and shame,
  Through tribulation, they to glory came;
  Bond-slaves delivered from sin’s crushing load,
  Brands plucked from burning by the hand of God.

  Yon robes of theirs are not like those below;
    No angel’s half so bright;
  Whence came that beauty, whence that living glow,
    And whence that radiant white? 
  Washed in the blood of the atoning Lamb,
  Fair as the light these robes of theirs became;
  And now, all tears wiped off from every eye,
  They wander where the freshest pastures lie,
  Through all the nightless day of that unfading sky!

ANONYMOUS.

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THE TWO WORLDS.

  Two worlds there are.  To one our eyes we strain,
  Whose magic joys we shall not see again;
    Bright haze of morning veils its glimmering shore. 
      Ah, truly breathed we there
      Intoxicating air—­
    Glad were our hearts in that sweet realm of
        Nevermore.

  The lover there drank her delicious breath
  Whose love has yielded since to change or death;
    The mother kissed her child, whose days are o’er. 
      Alas! too soon have fled
      The irreclaimable dead: 
    We see them—­visions strange—­amid the
        Nevermore.

  The merrysome maiden used to sing—­
  The brown, brown hair that once was wont to cling
    To temples long clay-cold:  to the very core
      They strike our weary hearts,
      As some vexed memory starts
    From that long faded land—­the realm of
        Nevermore.

  It is perpetual summer there.  But here
  Sadly may we remember rivers clear,
    And harebells quivering on the meadow-floor. 
      For brighter bells and bluer,
      For tenderer hearts and truer
    People that happy land—­the realm of
        Nevermore.