‘Tis evening over Salem’s towers a golden luster gleams,
And lovingly and lingeringly the sun prolongs his beams;
He looks, as on some work undone, for which the time has passed;
So tender is his glance and mild, it seems to be his last.
But a brighter Sun is looking on, more earnest is His eye,
For thunder clouds will veil Him soon, and darken all the sky.
O’er Zion still He bends, as loth His presence to remove,
And on her walls there lingers yet the sunshine of His love.
‘Tis Jesus. With an anguished heart a parting glance He throws;
For mercy’s day she has sinned away for a night of dreadful woes.
“Would thou hadst known,” He said, while down rolled many a tear,
“My words of peace, in this thy day; but now thine end is near.
Alas for thee, Jerusalem! How cold thy heart to Me!
How often in Mine arms of love would I have gathered thee
My sheltering wing had been your shield, My love your happy lot:
I would it had been thus with thee; I would, but ye would not.”
He wept alone, and men passed on, the men whose sins He bore:
They saw the Man of sorrows weep: they had seen Him weep before.
They asked not whom those tears were for; they asked not whence they flowed;
Those tears were for rebellious man: their source, the heart of God.
They fell upon this desert earth like drops from heaven on high,
Struck from an ocean tide of love that fills eternity.
With love and tenderness divine those crystal cells o’erflow,
‘Tis God that weeps, through human eyes, for human guilt and woe.
That hour has fled; those tears are told; the agony has Passed
The Lord has wept, the Lord has bled, but has not loved His last.
His eye of love is downward bent, still ranging to and fro,
Where’er in this wide wilderness there roams the child of woe.
Nor His alone the Three in One Who looked through Jesus’ eye
Could still the harps of angel bands to hear the suppliant sigh.
And when the rebel chooses wrath, God mourns his hapless lot,
Deep breathing from His heart of love, “I would, but ye would not.”