Your ShelfYour Projects

ONLY A GRAVE

9%

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 22, 1878

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 52, No. 9.

Read the full edition

ONLY A GRAVE.

By Mary A. Davis

Before the sons of Heth alone he stood, That princely, white-haired man, with anguish bowed; The loved one, of his home the joy and light, Must be forever hidden from his sight; Though Hebron’s vale before him wide and fair, He had no title to possession there. “I am a stranger in your midst,” he said; “Grant me a place wherein to lay my dead.”
And this is he to whom, in life’s glad morning, When called, an exile, from his home away, From friend and kindred, to an unknown country, In trusting faith to take his lonely way, A wondrous promise had Jehovah given, A pledge that bore the signet seal of Heaven: His children as the stars, a mighty nation; That goodly land forevermore his own; And far adown the dim and distant ages, He sees Messiah reign on David’s throne. Glories untold upon his vision gleam, Glories surpassing mortal’s brightest dream.
Yet he homeless stands before Machpelah’s cave, His sole possession, for the loved a grave. Heir of the world by the pledged word of Heaven, To him no heritage on earth was given.
Only a grave! pilgrims like him below, No home, no dwelling-place on earth we know; Only at night rest for the weary head, Only a grave to shield the precious dead.
Only a grave! we hide our loved with weeping, And hasten forward on our lonely way; God has our treasures safely in his keeping, The night is waning and we may not stay. E’en now the dawn on the far heavens we see; The day is breaking, and the shadows flee!
Only a grave! yet give no place to sadness; When the loved sleepers waken from the tomb, We shall remember, with what untold gladness, Our heritage is not this world of gloom. Unchanged His word through all the ages fled Since the patriarch was numbered with the dead.
Not here, not here lies the fair land of promise, Nor here the weary spirit may find rest: But “over yonder,” on the plains of Eden, With him, the “father of the faithful,” blessed. Never our treasure there may death despoil, Never a grave shall mar that holy soil.
MARY A. DAVIS.
Battle Creek, Mich.