Blessed Are the Dead by Elizabeth Rosser

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Aug 22, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 33.

Blessed Are the Dead

By Elizabeth Rosser

By Elizabeth Rosser

How safe are the innocent babes that we lay In the grave's silent chamber to rest! They quietly wait for the dawning of day. How sweet is their slumber! how blest!

In anguish we watched while they struggled for breath All through the long hours of the night; We wept when we yielded them over to death, And hid them away from our sight.

We miss them — we miss them! Yet why should we weep? They are safe from all trouble and care; And Jesus the Saviour Himself blessed their sleep. They need not a tear nor a prayer.

Those dear little feet never strayed into sin; Those sweet lips were guileless and pure; They know naught of struggles without or within; Their life is in Jesus secure.

Beneath the watchcare of His all-seeing eye They rest, free from earthly alarms; The angels have noted the place where they lie, And will bear them again to our arms.

But, O, for the loved on the mountains astray In the dark, in the storm, in the cold, Who have no desire for the dawning of day, Not a wish to come into the fold!

Their innocent babyhood days long have flown; Their feet have strayed far from our side; Their hands have slipped long ago out of our own,— Farther off than the children who died.

O, mother who sittest with sorrow-bowed head,— With sad eyes, tear-laden and dim, Weep not o'er the grave of thine innocent dead; The living — O, sorrow for him.

St. Johns, Oregon.