“WATCHMAN, WHAT OF THE NIGHT?”
By Wm. Milne
What seest thou, watchman upon Zion's hights?
What are the tokens of a brighter dawn?
And what the import of those glorious sights
Seen by those who, from the world withdrawn,
Are waiting for their Lord, the King of kings,
To come again “with healing in his wings”? Adown the vista of the coming years
There seems no place for holy, calm repose;
Sin, shame and sorrow, war and blood, and tears,
Fill up the measurement of human woes
Till He appears whose right it is to reign
Forever—King of Zion to remain. Men make advance, with restless, hurried stride,
Through every lane and avenue of art,
But gold and self, the idols of their pride,
Defile the temple of the human heart.
They honor science as a thing divine,
And bow the knee to Mammon's glittering shrine. They climb high up among the burning stars,
And, all ambitious of posthumous fame,
They dig down deep through earth's eternal bars,
And on her rock-ribbed sides engrave a name,—
Unveil her hidden measure as they go,
And of her mysteries make open show. With skillful hands they guide the iron steed,
Dragging its mile-long heavy-laden train
Through tunnelled mount, or 'neath the river's bed,
O'er ocean crest, or deep, dark, bridged ravine,
Near where the foaming, thundering cataract
Scatters its spray upon the iron track. A highway of communication men have made,—
A way the vulture's red eye hath not seen;
Deep, down, along old ocean's slimy bed
And far beyond the reach of human ken;
Old ocean, belted with magnetic wire,
Affords a railway for the lightning's fire. Men sit like gods, and on the electric flash
Send their dispatches to the world abroad,
Sometimes to fall, too, as the lightning's flash,
On guilty heads escaping from the rod;
The lightning's message heads them on the track,
And sends the law's bold violators back. All this is done, yet still the world grows worse,—
More reckless, riotous, more lewd, more rude;
Downward to death in devious ways men force,
Through crimsoned paths all slippery with blood;
The world's athirst for glitter and for gold,
And men in crime grow every day more bold. There is no sacredness attached to life,
There's no security for worth or wealth;
Incendiary's torch, assassin's knife
Seek hardly now night's sable cloak of stealth;
Men with the robber and the murderer meet,
In the thronged mart and on the crowded street. They mouth the heavens, and openly defy,
And laugh to scorn the laws of God and man;
Left to believe their own stupendous lie,
They live but dark and damning deeds to plan;
A groaning, war-cursed world to flood
With seas of sorrow, burning tears and blood. No day goes by without its murderous deeds,
No night without its horrifying crimes;
Yet unconcerned the easy watchman reads
The long, black catalogue—and says the times
Are, notwithstanding, steadily improving,
And onward to millennial glory moving! Youth jostles age, and scoffs at hoary hairs,
The sire submits to the precocious son;
And children, to repay parental cares,
The tottering steps of gray-haired parents shun,
Rush on to ruin, and provoke the doom
Of disobedience, and an early tomb. Still deeper, darker, denser, grows the cloud
That o'er the future of the nations lowers;
Distrustful murmurs every day more loud
And general grow against despotic powers,
Who break the people with an iron rod,
Claiming to be the vicegerents of God. “How long,” the prisoners cry, “O Lord, how long
Shall sin and sorrow in the world prevail,
The wicked prosper and their hands grow strong,
The wrong and right successfully assail?
Defiant, fearless, daring to blaspheme
Thy ever holy, ever hallowed name. “How long shall blood touch blood, and rampant
crime
Stalk unabashed in open face of day?
Whilst sainted hypocrites pour out the slime
Of adulation on the powers that slay
Earth's needy ones—the helpless and the poor—
Lord, unrebuked, how long shall this endure?”
—Wm. Milne.