A TRAVELER o'er the weary western plain
Gained distant sight of heaven-kissing peaks,
Whose lofty heads seemed far to rise above
The rude attack of any earthly storm.
But no! E'en as he gazed, there gathered fast
The messengers of elemental wrath.
Thick darkness blotted out from mortal sight
The topmost peak, and thunder's awful peal
Bespoke concussion dire of fiercest strife.
Sad that the highest earth can show must bear
The stress and shame and wreck of angry war,
The traveler mused in bitterness on fate
And pain and death—when lo! his path had reached
The place of storm, and all around he saw,
Not torn and blasted witnesses of wrath,
Not e'en the mountain's hard and rugged shapes,
But, soft as wool, and white as light of sun,
That silvery supreme of heaven, the snow.
Earth has its storms for all; no height secure
From blackest cloud and sternest thunder peal.
Yet fear thou not, my soul! For every storm
May bring new peace. Black clouds not always are
The smoke of hell. See thou in them, faint heart,
The hiding-place of love unknowable,
And when the thunder of God's voice has ceased,
And from the heaven above breaks in the light
Of that glad day which knows no shadowing cloud,
Thou shalt behold thyself, not torn and marred,
Nor even see the rude and shapeless waste—
So long familiar to thy harassed thought,
But over all that robe of purest white
Which is the righteousness of saints; that robe
Which first from heaven came to sinful earth,
Amid the struggle of the darkest hour
The world has ever seen, when on the Mount
Of Calvary the awful storm of wrath
Divine swept over Him who once for all
Did conquer storm and wreck, and evermore
Doth pray for all his own, that faith fail not.