'Tis evening-over Salem's towers
A golden luster gleams,
And lovingly and lingeringly
The sun prolongs his beams;
He looks, as on some work undone,
For which the time has past;
So tender is his glance and mild,
It seems to be his last.
But a brighter Sun is looking on,
More earnest is His eye,
For thunder-clouds will veil Him soon,
And darken all the sky;
O'er Zion still He bends, as loath
His presence to remove,
And on her walls there lingers yet
The sunshine of His love.
'Tis Jesus-with an anguish'd heart,
A parting glance He throws;
For mercy's day she has sinn'd away
For a night of dreadful woes;
" Would that thou hadst known," he said
While down roll'd many a tear,
" My words of peace, in this thy day;
But now thine end is near;
Alas! for thee, Jerusalem,
How cold thy heart to me!
How often in these arms of love,
Would I have gathered thee!
My sheltering wing had been your shield,
My love your happy lot:
I would it had been thus with thee
I would, but ye would not."
He wept alone, and men passed on,
The men whose sins he bore;
They saw the Man of sorrows weep,
They had seen Him weep before;
They ask'd not whom those tears were for,
They ask'd not whence they flowed;
Those tears were for rebellious man;
Their source, the heart of God:
They fell upon this desert earth,
Like drops from heaven on high,
Struck from an ocean-tide of love
That fills eternity.
With love and tenderness divine,
Those crystal cells o'erflow,
'Tis God that weeps, through human eyes,
For human guilt and woe.
That hour has fled, those tears are told;
The agony is past;
The Lord has wept, the Lord has bled,
But has not loved His last.
His eye of love is downward bent,
Still ranging to and fro,
Where'er in this wide wilderness
There roams the child of woe;
Nor His alone-the Three in One,
Who looked through Jesu's eye,
Could still the harps of angel bands,
To hear the suppliant sigh;
And when the rebel chooses wrath,
God mourns his hapless lot,
Deep breathing from His heart of love,
" I would, but ye would not."