(Vouched for as strictly true.)
An Extract.
THE widow slept; and while her eyes
Were closed in slumber, a dream she dreamed,
Filling her soul with sweet surprise,
So strange and yet so true it seemed.
When morning dawns, and the widow wakes,
“It could only have been a dream,” she cried.
“How swift a journey the spirit takes!
I thought at first I had surely died.”
Her scanty store for a scanty meal
She carried in to a neighbor’s near:
“I should like the warmth of your fire to feel,
And to eat my morsel in comfort here.”
“Ay, ay, come in; there is always room,
And put thy chair in the old man’s nook,
And tell him something, to chase his gloom,
Out of thy favorite, holy book.
“Thou hast a scanty breakfast.” “Nay,
It is enough,” she quickly cried.
“The promise fails not from day to day;
I know my Father will still provide.
“And if so be He should want me home,
It is a token that’s easily read:
Whenever He means to bid me come,
And not before, He will stop the bread.”
“You’re happy, Nancy?” “Ay, ay,” she cried;
“And so would you be if you were me.
There’s never a sinner for whom Christ died
Whose life on earth should unhappy be.
“And yesternight I was dreaming, too,
A happy dream you would like to hear;
A dream, I know, which is mostly true:
I wish the end might be true and near.
“I thought I stood by a river side,
And far away on the other shore
Was the golden city, its gates flung wide:
But there was no one to take me o’er.
“I saw the ‘shining ones’ in the street;
I heard their harp-strings music pour;
I saw them waiting my soul to greet:
But there was no one to take me o’er.
“I thought I saw where the Saviour’s throne
Shone in the midst of that city fair:
Oh, how I longed to be up and gone!
And suddenly, suddenly I was there!”
She ceased; and after a pause they said,
“And what did you see in that city fair?”
No answer. The spirit to heaven had fled:
Suddenly, suddenly she was there.