Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, HYMN, by GEORGE LUNT


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HYMN, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Great god! How vain our lives can be
Last Line: And to the weary opens heaven.
Subject(s): God; Vanity


GREAT God! how vain our lives can be,
Forgetful of their true estate!
Our wandering spirits fly from thee,
Relinquish heaven and tempt their fate.

Yet what a dream, if this were all,—
To gain the world and win but loss!
To feel its chiefest pleasures pall,
To grasp its gold, and find it dross.

Oh, could we taste those living springs,
That flow through all the heavenly road,
And feel the soul's expanded wings,
Reviving, mount to thine abode!

But doubts and fears, like cloud on cloud,
Around us fling their gloomy screen,
And sin grows up, a frightful shroud,
Our hearts, and oh, our heaven between.

Strange, thus to slight immortal birth,
To chase each transient shade that flies,
And for the baseless things of earth
Forego our title to the skies!

Yet thus we cling to time's control,
And wasted hopes to earth are given,
Till God recalls the wandering soul,
And to the weary opens heaven.





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