A Song of the King's Highway by Arthur W. Spaulding

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Sep 5, 1912

A Song of the King's Highway

By Arthur W. Spaulding

ARTHUR W. SPAULDING

Dark and devious are the ways That thread the mist-hung hills, And the luminous haze of the beacon's blaze The wight's poor heart but chills; For the high flames glare on the robber's lair And the camp of the brigand bold, Who steal the cheer of the hearthstone fair To lure for the lust of gold.

O, what is the goal of the twisting trail? And who shall find the track, If storms prevail, and the senses fail To trace the footsteps back? For the clouds and the night have plotted the plight, And the thickets hide but foes, And the King's highway that holds in the light Is a way that no one knows.

Ah, I have trodden those rocky steeps, And hung on the chasm's brink, Where the cataract leaps, and the traveler creeps, And the shuddering senses shrink. And I have spied on the furtive-eyed Who watch to plunder the souls That have wandered there for the lack of a guide, And a strange confusion of goals.

And now I raise my voice on high To pierce the dark defiles, That far or nigh, they may hear my cry With whom I walked the whiles. For the joy that fills and the peace that stills Have turned the night to day, And my heart goes singing over the hills; For I walk the King's highway.

Madison, Tenn.