Gone up! But whither? To a star?
Some orb that seems a point of light?
Or one too infinitely far
For our fond gaze beneath the night?
Some fairer world, to which our own,
With all its vastness, is a grain?
Is’t there the God-Man sets His throne—
Fit centre of a boundless reign?
Let science coldly sweep away
A fancied Eden here and there
From out the starry space, and say
‘Tis all brute matter—crude and bare
Or stern philosophy demand.
May not yon myriad orbs we ken
Be but a pinch of golden sand,
To stretch the narrow minds of men?
Yet Faith makes answer, meekly bold
Narrow to me your widest lore—
Without the blessed truth I hold
That God is man for evermore.
He came to wed our life to His:
As man was born, and died, and rose:
And in His victor Flesh it is
Our hopes of Paradise repose.
He wore it through the sweet delay
That kept him with His dear ones yet;
Nor put it from Him on the day
He passed from topmost Olivet.
Then still He wears it in the skies—
Matter in place. And when the cloud
Received Him from the gazers’ eyes—
Before their brimming hearts allowed
That they had lost Him—swift as thought,
He reached the bright Elysian home
His own primeval word had wrought—
New Eden for the race to come.