O love sublime!
How thy sweet influence agitates the soul,
Voicing its hidden chords, as breathing winds
Wake the rude harp to thrilling melody.
All things must pass away; but love shall live
For ever. 'Tis th' immortal soul of life.
Scathless and beauteous midst th' incongruous mass
Of desolated hearts and stricken souls,
And spirits faintful 'neath a world of woe,
And dusky millions in the mine of life;
And all the rank corruption of the earth--
Its weeds, its thorns, its sadness-breeding hate;
Its selfishness, its swallow-pinioned friends;
Its rottenness of core and lack of truth:
When all have changed, save Nature and itself,
This Heaven-sent flow'r of Eden--peerless love--
Shall blossom in Evangel purity,
And sanctify a host to people Heaven.