Martha Lavinia Hoffman: Verses about Happiness

What are you singing my beautiful bird?
What are the words of your song?
How can you carol when always denied
The freedom for which you must long?

Once, where the wild roses blushing at morn
Grew pale at the sunset's first glow;
Hidden from sight by a cool, leafy screen,
Your little nest swung to and fro.

There your bright eyes first awoke to the light,
And your restless wings scarcely could wait;
So eager to try in the great outside world,
Their portion of fortune or fate.

But long ere your delicate velvety wings
Were penciled with faint lines of blue;
With the first eager taste of sweet freedom's delight,
A prison stood ready for you.

Have you forgotten the shadowy trees,
With the lily-bells nodding below?
Have you forgotten the rocky hill-side,
Where the wood-pinks and buttercups grow?

There I too, wandered, unfettered and free,
Ere my prison doors hid them from sight;
I too, am longing to see them again
Aglow in the sun's golden light.

For I am a prisoner, too, beautiful bird,
Shut in from the beauties I love;
Shut in from the blossoms and verdure beneath,
And the blue of the cloud-lands above.

O teach me, sweet singer, your pure, artless song,
That I may your happiness share;
And forget in the joy of a rapture like them,
The phantoms of hope and despair!

The birds are happy, singing all day through
Their little psalms of praise,
And just because the sky is clear and blue,
The grasses green, the trees in leafage new;
Awake my heart, and be thou happy too,
These sunny days.

Sing, as the birds sing, just for love
Of God and song;
Make for His temple every leafy grove
That rears its frescoed canopy above.
Thy strength, thy freedom and thy gladness prove
O'er gloom and wrong.

One little songster taught me his lay
It was so sweet,
These were the warbled words he seemed to say:
'Earth is so joyous that I long to stay,
Heaven is so glorious, I would fly away.'
Still doth his song repeat.

Dreading to live, yet fearing more to die,
Take thy distress
To where the birds through field and forest fly,
Trilling their thankfulness to earth and sky,
And without gold, or lands or honor, buy
Such songs as this.

The birds are singing, not for gold or fame
Their songs may bring.
O, what care they for words of slight or blame,
For breathless listeners, or honored name!
To empty aisles they carol just the same
Because they love to sing.

The birds are happy, 'till their joy o'erflows
In minstrelsy;
No wealth for them in glittering treasure glows.
Awake, my heart, and know what nature knows
The ecstasy of life that is and was
And evermore shall be.

'Tis morn in Joseph's garden now
Where death and night and darkness were,
The lilies still in sadness bow
Around the Saviour's sepulcher,
Angels in shining garments clad
Speak first the word that mortals heed
'Till Nature, wrapt in gloom, is glad;
The Lord is risen, is risen indeed.

Gladly they bear the message on
Who stood beside His empty tomb,
The night is o'er, the darkness gone
The angels sing, the lilies bloom.
Powerless the chains of death to bind
The captive from their bondage freed,
Death's dreary dungeon left behind,
The Lord is risen, is risen indeed.

As rose the sun above the heights
Chasing the gloom from earth and skies
Behold above the night of nights
The Sun or Righteousness arise;
Burst are the chains of death and hell,
Go ye, who hear the message, speed,
Above the graves of nations tell
The Lord is risen, is risen indeed.

'Tis morn upon the earth, once more,
Sweet Easter morn when lilies spring
To greet the sun from shore to shore
And saints rejoice and angels sing;
All nature now breaks forth in song
And Easter anthem angels lead
With joyful hearts the strains prolong,
The Lord is risen, is risen indeed.

'Tis morn, the gospel light has streamed
From Africa's coast to India's strand,
The dawn of which the prophet dreamed
Is flooding each benighted land.
Above the vanities of men
O'er crumbling shrine and moldering creed
High o'er the mountain tops of sin
The Lord is risen, is risen indeed.

The happiest day of all the year is this
By song and sunshine ushered in,
Only the tyranny of sin
Can cloud her perfect joyousness,
Only the minor strain of wrongs
Can sadden her immortal songs.

Christmas we sang a Saviour's birth,
Today that Saviour crucified
Has risen triumphant, glorified,
And waked the Easter song of earth,
That song by Easter angels led
That Christ is risen from the dead.

And the fair Easter lilies rise
From the long burial underground,
Symbols of life in victory crowned
Of Earth responding to the skies,
Of Nature bursting Earth's brown crust,
Of beauty risen from the dust.

Each year the lilies hear the call
Of prophecy, of hope and trust,
Awake and sing who dwell in dust
And the fair lilies waken all,
And old Earth listens for the voice
That bids her waken and rejoice.

Softly the waking call doth come:-
Awake and sing, all hearts that dwell
Earth-burdened like the lily bell,
Wake glad hymn on tongue long dumb,
Let angels roll the stone away
From life and light and love today.

And may the voiceless lilies bear
To every soul a message breathed
In fragrance and with beauty wreathed,
To sorrow- hope; to sin- a prayer,
And happy hearts go forth to swell
The anthem of the lily bell.

And sweet shall sound the lily chime
Glad Easter coming, here, and gone,
'Till death and night and sin shall dawn
Into a nightless morning clime
With all Earth-darkness cast aside
And all Earth-brightness glorified.

O, can I be happy in Heaven,
Though free from earth's trouble and care;
Though glories undreamed of be given,
If one whom I love is not there?
Could I walk the bright streets in my gladness,
Secure from all darkness and doubt;
And feel not a shadow of sadness
For one lost in midnight without?

O, could I be happy in Heaven?
Could the joys of that beautiful place,
Soothe to calmness my soul, anguish-riven
O'er the memory of one absent face?
And to know that forever and ever,
My pleadings and prayers are too late;
That to find them and save them I never
May pass through the beautiful gate!

O, should I be happy in Heaven,
If one whom I love is not there?
Would not the bright heritage given
Be a burden too dreadful to bear?
The crown and the harp, and the mansion
In that sunlight that never shall set;
Will the soul in its glorious expansion,
Thrilled with rapture, its sorrow forget?

O, would I be happy in Heaven
I ask? Could that other world's bliss
Make up to the soul that has striven
For the hopes that are blighted in this?
Could we walk by the beautiful river,
Could we tread the bright pavements of gold;
Forgetting, forgetting forever
The friends and affections of old?

O, shall we be happy in Heaven,
When the tears are all wiped from our eyes?
Will our hearts never ache- anguish-riven-
For a soul that eternally dies?
If one thing could soothe the sad spirit,
'Twere His love, who before us hath trod;
Could we think of one loved one and bear it,
Shut out from the presence of God?

O, this is so little of living,
And that is so endlessly more;
Shall the strongest of ties Time is weaving
Be rent at the portal before?
To one, endless happiness given,
To one, an eternal despair;
O, can we be happy in Heaven,
If one whom we love is not there?

O Thou, who in agony's garden,
Wept teardrops of sorrow and blood;
Who paid on the cross for our pardon,
Redeemed us from sin unto God,
May one priceless answer be given
The longing that burdens my prayer;
That when I am with Thee in Heaven,
All, all whom I love may be there!

One thought of holy ecstasy
Breaks on my spirit's sight
Like a bright, flashing meteor
Athwart the skies at night;
'Tis not of all the glory
Eternity may hold,
That centuries unmeasured
Shall wondrously unfold;
'Tis not of all the music
Angelic choirs shall pour,
Like rolling ocean billows,
To break on either shore;
My thoughts turn back bewildered,
Too weak to comprehend
The unsolved mighty problem
Of the never-ending end;
But sometimes vaguely, dimly,
I seam to realize
One glimpse of all the glory
Unseen by mortal eyes;
One burst of matchless music,
That souls redeemed hath stirred;
One sweep of that grand melody,
That ear hath never heard.
Thou saint, who circling cycles
Hath borne through seas of bliss,
I ask not of your triumphs
From such a world as this;
But thou, exultant spirit,
Freed from a world of woe,
Who the first glimpse of Heaven
Hath journeyed out to know,
Tell me what thrill of rapture,
Of happiness divine,
Hath thrilled and swayed and overflowed
That human heart of thine?
The dungeon bars behind thee,
The palace gates before,
Thou, entering to the presence
Of God forevermore,
One burst of Heavenly light,
And all beyond thee- glory,
And all behind thee- night;
Life's give of sin and misery,
Earth's dower of blight and ban,
How seem they, when a glimpse of Heaven
Enters the heart of man?
Oh, all the strife and discord
Of years that seemed so long,
The sound of earthly voices
That thrilled the world with song,
The glare of earthly grandeur,
The pleasure and the pain,
Life with its doubtful portion
Of blessing and of bane,
Left like a heavy burden
All in the vanished past,
To rise above corruption,
A grave-stone at the last!
Needs it a vast forever,
With joy its grief to drown,
The power of endless ages,
To bid it crumble down?
Oh, when within the presence
Of glory and grace,
We hear archangel trumpets,
Behold the Saviour's face,
Before the crown is brought us,
Before the palm we wave,
Before we have forgotten
The darkness of the grave;
When with a song of triumph
The chains of death are riven,
The clouds of years will melt before,
One little glimpse of Heaven!

Backward across the lapse of years,
With its ebbing tide of smiles and tears,
Memory turns her wistful gaze
And sighs for the pleasures of by-gone days,
Yearns for one glimpse through the crested foam
And pauses to whisper: 'Home, sweet Home.'

Not for a palace does she sigh
With rare old painting and tapestry,
Nor an humble cottage with lowly wall,
Nor the haughty pride of a stately hall;
For the loving, tender grace of home
Is more than the palace, cot or dome.

O bare were the walls, though decked with care
If affection never flourished there!
And lonely each richly furnished room
If love came not to light their gloom,
Powerless the sweetest spot on earth
If crumbling walls were its only worth;

But the threshold is worn by hurrying feet
Whose pathways perhaps no more shall meet,
And loving voices still perfume the air
Like ghosts of dead roses hovering there;
And smiles still blend with the sun-beams bright,
And tears distill with the dews of night;

And the vines o'er the moss-grown portals wound
Have thrilled to the touch of a loving hand.
And each tree and shrub in the garden's bowers
Bears some time-worn record of childhood hours;
And crowned over all in its undimmed grace
The gentle light of a mother's face.

Forward beyond the wrecks of time
Faith looks to another fairer clime
Where no crumbling shrines of lost happiness
Shall dim the past with their bitterness,
Where no vanished hand shall leave iets trace
Or love repine for a long lost face.

Faith turns from sad Memory's crumbling dome
And sings in her gladness: 'Home, sweet Home!'
Not for the streets of transparent gold
Nor the pearly gateways backward rolled
Nor the tree of Life, nor the river fair
Nor the untold glories gathered there,

Nor the many mansions ever bright
In the beautiful realm where there is no night;
Not even the crown or the glittering throne
Is the prize that lures to that better home.
O Heaven, time were but barren dearth
If gold and gems were thine only worth!

But brighter than all those towers above
Is the haloed presence of sacred love,
For those gates shall echo the eager feet
And those courts resound when the ransomed meet,
And those mansions ring from portal to dome
When the wandering children are gathered home;

And crowned over all in matchless grace
The glorious light of the Saviour's face,
And the power that sways that world of bliss
Is the power that makes a home in this;
But nevermore shall the pilgrims roam
When they join in the angel's Home sweet Home.