Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

VII. Death: Immortality: Heaven

“Forever with the Lord”

James Montgomery (1771–1854)

FOREVER with the Lord!

Amen! so let it be!

Life from the dead is in that word,

And immortality.

Here in the body pent,

Absent from him I roam,

Yet nightly pitch my moving tent

A day’s march nearer home.

My Father’s house on high,

Home of my soul! how near,

At times, to faith’s foreseeing eye

Thy golden gates appear!

Ah! then my spirit faints

To reach the land I love,

The bright inheritance of saints,

Jerusalem above!

Yet clouds will intervene,

And all my prospect flies;

Like Noah’s dove, I flit between

Rough seas and stormy skies.

Anon the clouds depart,

The winds and waters cease;

While sweetly o’er my gladdened heart

Expands the bow of peace!

Beneath its glowing arch,

Along the hallowed ground,

I see cherubic armies march,

A camp of fire around.

I hear at morn and even,

At noon and midnight hour,

The choral harmonies of heaven

Earth’s Babel tongues o’erpower.

Then, then I feel that he,

Remembered or forgot,

The Lord, is never far from me,

Though I perceive him not.

In darkness as in light,

Hidden alike from view,

I sleep, I wake, as in his sight

Who looks all nature through.

All that I am, have been,

All that I yet may be,

He sees at once, as he hath seen,

And shall forever see.

“Forever with the Lord;”

Father, if ’t is thy will,

The promise of that faithful word

Unto thy child fulfil!

So, when my latest breath

Shall rend the veil in twain,

By death I shall escape from death,

And life eternal gain.