New England Religious Herald

POETRY.

The Dying Missionary.

BY THE LATE REV. T. E. HAWKINSON.

My strength is failing, Laura! one by one,
Ebb the last sands of life: my task is done;
And I have told thee all!—God gave me power
Surpassing Nature's at her parting hour.
Call them not idle dreams! on dying eyes
Of dawns a glimpse of bright realities
Nor else revealed.—By God's unchanging word
The peace and strength its promises afford—
The sure and certain hope of life that beams
Now in my spirit's depths—they are not dreams.
I have not lived in vain—albeit the spot
Where I have lived and labored know me not.
Though far from the dear country of my birth,
I lay my mouldering dust in stranger earth,
Though not one heart, but thine, no gentle wife,
Keep trace or record of my lowly life,
Yet God accepts my service; at his call
In cheerful faith, I gave my little all.
He sent me hither—here I toiled to win
His word an entrance: to this home of sin;
I toiled to teach this dull and drowsy air
The Sabbath melodies of praise and prayer.
And if, in after years, the seed I cast
In some lorn bosom, wake to life at last,
If but one savage soul have caught from mine
The dormant principle of love divine,
O, I should deem my labour cheaply spent, —
Even in that hope I die—I die content.
My own, to God I leave thee! trust him still,
He never failed thee—and he never will.
And part not hence, though beckoning o'er the main,
Thy northern mountains woo their child again.
Where olden sympathies might haply wake,
And bid thee welcome, for our father's sake,
Yet part not hence, a thousand memories dear,
Thy husband's home, thy husband's grave is here;
Thou must fulfil his work, thy gentle rule
Must still keep order in his little school,
Still must thou toil with patient zeal to find
The buried treasures of the negro's mind.
And that great God who evermore doth seek
For mightiest task the lowly and the weak.
May crown thy hopes, accepting at thy hand
the first ripe clusters of this barren land.
He may, but should thy day descend in gloom,
Should nought but Faith attend thee to the tomb,
Is it not scrolled upon the leaves of fate,
God's high decree, though mystery veils the date?
Yes! thou and I 'mid Heaven's ambrosial bowers,
Her thrones and principalities and powers,
Shall see from yonder empyrean height,
The march of sunshine o'er the realm of night,
Shall hear that shout by millions pealed above,
The Morian's land hath stretched her hand to God.