A Prospect of Heaven

By C. M. Watts

There is a land of pure delight,
Where saints immortal reign;
Eternal day excludes the night,
And pleasures banish pain.

There everlasting spring abides,
And never-withering flowers:
Death, like a narrow sea, divides
This heavenly land from ours.

Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
Stand dressed in living green:
So to the Jews old Canaan stood,
And Jordan rolled between.

O could we make our doubts remove,--
Those gloomy doubts that rise,--
And see the Canaan that we love
With unbeclouded eyes.

Could we but climb where Moses stood,
And view the landscape o'er,--
Not Jordan's stream, nor death's cold flood,
Should fright us from the shore.

Taken from Hymns for Christian Devotion, by J.G. Adams and E.H. Chapin