There is a land of pure delight, Where saints immortal reign; Infinite day excludes the night, And pleasures banish pain. There everlasting spring abides, And never-withering flowers; Death, like a narrow sea, divides This heavenly land from ours. Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood Stand dressed in living green; So to the Jews old Canaan stood, While Jordan rolled between. But timorous mortals start and shrink To cross this narrow sea, And linger shivering on the brink, And fear to launch away. Oh! could we make our doubts remove, Those gloomy doubts that rise, And see the Canaan that we love With unbeclouded eyes Could we but climb where Moses stood, And view the landscape o'er, Not Jordan's stream, nor death's cold flood Should fright us from the shore. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SUGGESTED BY THE COVER OF A VOLUME OF KEATS'S POEMS by AMY LOWELL AFTER DIVORCE; FOR NAHID SARMAD by KAREN SWENSON LOVE by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS FONTENOY by THOMAS OSBORNE DAVIS EPITHALAMIUM by ALFRED EDWARD HOUSMAN THE PESSIMIST by BENJAMIN FRANKLIN KING |