Evening Brings Us Home
By William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham)
Evening brings us home,--
From our wanderings afar,
From our multifarious labours,
From the things that fret and jar;
From the highways and the byways,
From the hill-tops and the vales;
From the dust and heat of city street,
And the joys of lonesome trails,--
Evening brings us home at last,
To Thee.
From plough and hoe and harrow, from the burden of the day,
From the long and lonely furrow in the stiff reluctant clay,
From the meads where streams are purling,
From the moors where mists are curling,--
Evening brings us home at last,
To rest, and warmth, and Thee.
From the pastures where the white lambs to their dams are ever crying,
From the byways where the Night lambs Thy
Love are crucifying,
From the labours of the lowlands,
From the glamour of the glowlands,--
Evening brings us home at last,
To the fold, and rest, and Thee.
From the Forests of Thy Wonder, where the mighty giants grow,
Where we cleave Thy works asunder, and lay the mighty low,
From the jungle and the prairie,
From the realms of fact and faerie,--
Evening brings us home at last,
To rest, and cheer, and Thee.
From our wrestlings with the spectres of the dim and dreary way,
From the vast heroic chances of the never-ending fray,
From the Mount of High Endeavour,
In the hope of Thy For Ever,--
Evening brings us home at last,
To trust and peace, and Thee.
From our toilings and our moilings, from the quest of daily bread,
From the worship of our idols, and the burying of our dead,
Like children, worn and weary
With the way so long and dreary,--
Evening brings us home at last,
To rest, and love, and Thee.
From our journeyings oft and many over strange and stormy seas,
From our search the wide world over for the larger liberties,
From our labours vast and various,
With our harvestings precarious,--
Evening brings us home at last,
To safety, rest, and Thee.
From the yet-untrodden No-Lands, where we sought Thy secrets out,
From the blizzards of the Nightlands, and the
blazing White-Lands' drought,
From the undiscovered country
Where our IS is yet to be,--
Evening brings us home at last,
To welcome cheer, and Thee.
From the temples of our living, all empurpled with Thy giving,
From the warp of life thick-threaded with the gold of Thine inweaving,
From the days so full of splendour,
From the visions rare and tender,--
Evening brings us home at last,
To quiet rest in Thee.
From the Dim-Lands, from the Grim-Lands,
from the Lands of High Emprise,
From the Lands of Disillusion to the Truth that never dies;
With rejoicing and with singing,
Each his rightful sheaves home-bringing,--
Evening brings us all at last,
To Harvest-Home with Thee.
From the fields of fiery trying, where our bravest and our best,
By their living and their dying their souls' high faith attest,
From these dread, red fields of sorrow,
From the fight for Thy To-morrow,--
Evening brings each one at last,
To GOD'S own Peace in Thee.