He rose! the everlasting gates of day Received the King of Glory on his way! The hope, the comforter of those who wept, And the first-fruits of them in Him that slept, He rose, he triumph’d! he will yet sustain Frail nature sinking in the strife of pain. Aided by Him, around the martyr’s frame When fiercely blazed a living shroud of flame, Hath the firm soul exulted, and the voice Raised the victorious hymn, and cried, Rejoice! Aided by Him, though none the bed attend Where the lone sufferer dies without a friend, He whom the busy world shall miss no more Than morn one dewdrop from her countless store, Earth’s most neglected child, with trusting heart, Call’d to the hope of glory, shall depart! And say, cold Sophist! if by thee bereft Of that high hope, to misery what were left? But for the vision of the days to be, But for the comforter despised by thee, Should we not wither at the Chastener’s look, Should we not sink beneath our God’s rebuke, When o’er our heads the desolating blast, Fraught with inscrutable decrees, hath pass’d, And the stem power who seeks the noblest prey Hath call’d our fairest and our best away? Should we not madden when our eyes behold All that we loved in marble stillness cold, No more responsive to our smile or sigh, Fix’d--frozen--silent--all mortality? But for the promise, “All shall yet be well,” Would not the spirit in its pangs rebel Beneath such clouds as darken’d when the hand Of wrath lay heavy on our prostrate land; And thou,[143] just lent thy gladden’d isles to bless, Then snatch’d from earth with all thy loveliness, With all a nation’s blessings on thy head, O England’s flower! wert gather’d to the dead? But thou didst teach us. Thou to every heart Faith’s lofty lesson didst thyself impart! When fled the hope through all thy pangs which smiled, When thy young bosom o’er thy lifeless child Yearn’d with vain longing--still thy patient eye To its last light beam’d holy constancy! Torn from a lot in cloudless sunshine cast, Amidst those agonies--thy first and last, Thy pale lip, quivering with convulsive throes, Breathed not a plaint--and settled in repose; While bow’d thy royal head to Him whose power Spoke in the fiat of that midnight hour, Who from the brightest vision of a throne, Love, glory, empire, claim’d thee for his own, And spread such terror o’er the sea-girt coast, As blasted Israel when her ark was lost!