Looking Beyond (Thank God there is a future, in whose sweep)

Thank God there is a future, in whose sweepThese little troubled streams of time and lifeLose, and forevermore, their song and strifeAs in a bottomless and boundless deep.

I would not give the Christian's simple faithIn an existence, endless and complete,To lay earth's cities, trophies at my feet,To earn the fame earth's proudest nation hath;

For oh! though life (this life) is dear to meFull of bright hopes and sweet realities,Time is a tangle of perplexitiesAnd sadness permeates all things that be.

Who shall restore the lost, the priceless thingsThat eager seekers search life's pathway for?Who shall health, guiltlessness and youth restoreOr wealth and grandeur, flown on noiseless wings?

To many, life is like a long regret;Mistakes and failures, never understood,Like weeds, choke out the beautiful and good;Man most remembers when he would forget.

The errors, follies and the crimes that traceYouth's reckless and misguided wanderingsIn hidden hearts have set their deathless stingsAnd drawn their anguish lines on beauty's face.

And what is life to him whose days are passedIn dire affliction, cursed among his kind,In youth infirm, in manhood's glory blind,Spring's promise blighted by cold winter's blast?

And after all, though Fortune's favoriteLong life and happiness and wealth may gain,In every heart there is a secret pain,Each life must have its bitter and its sweet.

And when the future generations lookBack to a past that is our present now;The aching heart and anxious, troubled browWill never mar a page of Memory's book.

The troubled, tossing torrent and the tideDeep and unbroken in its even flow;Amid the depths of ocean, who shall knowWhere brooks are lost and mightiest rivers hide?

What value hath the gem's resplendent rayMore than the common pebble on the beach,When both are borne beyond our mortal reachBy waves, that none may dare command to stay?

The happiest and most wretched of mankindHath naught to boast of, nothing to deplore;When they who were are counted as no more,The years roll on and all are left behind.

Life were a dark deceit, a demon's jest,A falsehood and a cruel mockeryIf all its high, sweet promises could beOnly an unsolved problem of the past.

Thank God, there is a future life where weShall find the treasures we have lost in thisNor time, nor tide shall steal away the blissThat rolls unbroken as a waveless sea;

Where man may start anew with tireless zeal,Time left behind, Eternity before,Through endless cycles rising more and moreTo understand what Time could not reveal.

Unburdened by this heavy cloak of clayTo scale such heights as mortals may not climb;To solve at last the enigma page of Time,Triumphant o'er the despot of decay.

I would not give the Christian's weakest trustThat grasps the future life for which we longFor all the hopes so ardent, high and strong,Of this weak life that crumbles into dust.