Not Here But Hereafter. Poem by William Billington

WHEN all the world with wonder teemed,
More fair than Fancy ever dreamed,
And God through all things burned and beamed,
And life was bliss supreme;
When, from Youth's care-unclouded skies,
Thought-Stars looked down with golden eyes
That peeped into Love's Paradise,
Where Beauty lay a-dream,

I lavished my heart-store upon
As faithful and as fair a one
As e'er Life's sun shone proudly on,
Or Death through envy smote;
Earth seemed what Heaven in glory is,
While Faith, in other worlds than this,
Was planting bowers of boundless bliss
With fadeless flowers of thought.

Here Hope built castles in the air,
Till Love believed we destined were
To walk this world, a peerless pair,
By Sorrow unassailed;
But Death, that gloomy archer, sped
One fatal shaft, and Life's tree shed
Its blossoms as it passed, Hope fled,
And Love's Utopia failed!

This once fair world grew dark and dim,
The stars no more seemed seraphim,
But fiends, fraught with the frown of Him
Who reigns the stars above;
And mad as the wild ocean-wave,
When fierce Tornadian tempests rave,
My life-stream leapt, to gain the grave
Which parts me from my love!

My rose of bliss is blighted, and
My star of hope is set-the Land
Of Promise lost in gloom. Time's hand
Moves slow-Death flies pursuit!
My Tree of Life will not resume
Its lustre-shedding load of bloom,
Till, set in soil beyond the tomb,
It flowers for deathless fruit!