Sweet is it to stay
on this assured fact,
that pallid want
and gaunt importunate woe
are travail of an alien sense,
no more my own
than are the shadows that men tread upon.
No thought can jar,
nor pain, nor circumstance,
nor any want,
nor sickness, nor distress,
nor doleful weariness,
that happy man
who walks unharmed the holy courts of heaven.
Him Love surrounds,
supreme and unopposed,
for he is dear;
him Life itself makes strong,
who is Life's shining son;
him Truth holds still—
whom God has made, guarded he must remain.
So living in this light
I find new might
with spiritual thought above
that dark pretense
and shadow of the suffering sense—
beholding once for all the face of Love.
