Page:All quiet along the Potomac and other poems.djvu/280

 2/4 CAMP-MEETING AT OCEAN GROVE.

A cloud, soft and snowy, floats upward ;

I think, as I watch it flit o er Out of sight, tis the glorified body

Of the wavelet that died on the shore.

Around and about me, uncounted,

Throng worshippers, drifting together,

As the leaves in the hollows are heaped

By the gusts of the bright autumn weather

Blooming girls, in the pride of their beauty;

Old men, with the almond-bloom crowned ; Pale and pitiful worn women s faces,

Where tear-drops a channel have found ;

Stout men, with their hardened hands folded ;

Fair children, whose song is a prayer; And grandams, who wait to go over,

Full soon, to the &quot; home over there.&quot;

Now, they glow as the hymn rises upward, Now, bow neath a prayer-laden breath,

Now, a shout supplements the glad story Of &quot; ransomed from sin and from death.&quot;

Rising now, hark ! they sing &quot; Coronation,&quot; Sing of kingdom and glory to be,

Till the gates of the city stand open To the surge of humanity s sea.

O beautiful Camp-meeting Sunday ! When clouds on my path hover low,

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