Hymn VIII.

The world is not their friend, nor the world’s law.

Lo where a crowd of Pilgrims toil

Yon craggy steeps among!

Strange their attire, and strange their mien,

As wild they press along.

Their eyes with bitter streaming tears

Now bend towards the ground,

Now rapt, to heaven their looks they raise,

And bursts of song resound.

And hark! A voice from ’midst the throng

Cries, ‘Stranger, wouldst thou know

Our name, our race, our destined home,

Our cause of joy or woe,

‘Our country is Emanuel’s land,

We seek that promised soil;

The songs of Zion chear our hearts,

While strangers here we toil.

‘Oft do our eyes with joy o’erflow,

And oft are bathed in tears,

Yet nought but heaven our hopes can raise,

And nought but sin our fears.

‘The flowers that spring along the road

We scarcely stoop to pluck,

We walk o’er the beds of shining ore,

Nor waste one wishful look:

‘We tread the path our Master trod,

We bear the cross he bore;

And every thorn that wounds our feet

His temples pierced before:

‘Our powers are oft dissolved away

In ecstasies of love,

And while our bodies wander here,

Our souls are fixed above:

‘We purge our mortal dross away,

Refining as we run;

But while we die to earth and sense,

Our heaven is begun.’

Text: Poems by Anna Laetitia Barbauld. New Ed. (London: Printed for Joseph Johnson, St. Paul’s Church-Yard, 1792), pp. 128-30.