I hail with joy the ominous day,
The dark, presaging dreadful rôle,
That shall divorce the Godlike soul
From earth’s best bride, organic clay.

My child sits weeping in the gloom
Beside her father’s bed of death;
She hears not but my labored breath,
She sees not but impending doom.

God of Elisha, deign to hear
The prayer that now I bring to Thee;
Open her eyes that she may see
The vision that my soul doth cheer.

A flowery walk ’twixt golden bars,
God’s ladder rises from the earth,
And ’dight with forms of heavenly birth,
It leans its head against the stars.

O joy divine, my eyes are blest
With power prophetic to behold,
At one quick glance, the new, the old,
The warfare and the victor’s rest.

I came to sail a mighty sea,
But lo, a brooklet, nothing more;
I see from shore to dripping shore,
From time into eternity.

From marge to marge I step across;
My clay is mixed with kindred clay,
As twilight is resolved in day;
No sad defeat, no grain of loss.

I came to meet the grisly king
And ghostly troop with bloody spears,
But, lo, a virgin form appears,
Sweet as the matin breath of Spring.

The light seems dull, I cannot see;
How cold and dense has grown my breath!
Surely, sweet virgin, thou art Death,
And thou shalt set my spirit free.

Fair is the hand that turns the key,
And kind the voice that bids me prove
The depth and length of God’s great love,
In God’s own day—eternity.

So mingle these two worlds in one
As lights and shadows do advance,
And mix and whirl in joyous dance,
When cloudlets fly athwart the sun.

It is as though one closed his eyes
Upon a world of toil and pain,
And straightway opened them again
Upon the joys of paradise.

God’s ways are not to mortals known,
And death, with all its gloom, may prove
The final baptism of that love
That calls us to our Father’s throne.

God’s winnowing fan, God’s cleansing flood,
May bless us in the passing hour,
Our souls, in transit, prove the power
Of purging fire and healing blood.

Thaddeus Constantine Reade
Exodus, and Other Poems, 1883