Explore "Light in Darkness" by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
We've room to build holy altars / Where our crumbling idols lay; / We've room for heavenly visions, / When our earth dreams fade away.
Through rifts and rents in our fortune / We gazed with blinding tears, / Till glimpses of light and beauty / Gilded our gloomy fears.
An angel stood at our threshold, / We thought him a child of night, / Till we saw the print of his steps / Made lines of living light.
We had much the world calls precious; / We had heaps of shining dust; / He laid his hand on our treasures, / And wrote on them moth and rust.
But still we had other treasures, / That gold was too poor to buy, / We clasped them closer and closer, / But saw them fade and die.
Our spirit grew faint and heavy, / Deep shadows lay on our years, / Till light from the holy city, / Streamed through our mist of tears.
And we thanked the chastening angel / Who shaded our earthly light, / For the light and beautiful visions / That broke on our clearer sight.
Our first view of the Holy City / Came through our darken'd years, / The songs that lightened our sorrows, / We heard 'mid our night of tears.