How shall I measure the morning
With the gloaming relaxing its hold,
With the dew diamond-like on the roses,
With the eastern sky glowing with gold,
While the night freshened air moves in rivulets
Bearing perfume from new-opened flowers?
Ah, the dawn, fresh spring of renewal
Re-endowing the soul with its powers!
But the morn is not only for beauty,
It’s a foretaste of opportune hours.
It’s a new day of cosmic adventure,
A vision viewed but from the towers.
It’s eternal potential encapsuled
In the fleeting moments of time,
So the aspiring heart is enabled
To accomplish a purpose sublime.
I shall measure the morn by its prospects,
For more than the beauty it brings.
It reopens before us the privilege
Of serving the Lord of all things,
For He fashions all of the mornings.
He causes the new day to be,
Then fills it with hope and with promise
Which faith at the dawning can see!
But many shall rise in the morning
To another day burdened with cares,
For yesterday’s pain is persistent
While vanished seem yesterday’s prayers.
They feel themselves mocked by the morning,
For soon comes the heat of the day,
Then anon the inexorable dimness
With life itself slipping away.
For them, the light is like darkness,
The dawn an intrusion as well.
The notion that God engines nature
Is nonsense—like heaven and hell.
Faithless, they move through the shadows,
Thinking not that last morn soon shall be,
When the life of the world is foreshortened
At the dawn of eternity.
Yes, there shall come a morning more lovely,
More beautifully scented than these!
It will be the morning celestial,
When all of the prospects shall please.
The light of that morn will be fadeless,
When we wake on eternity’s shore,
With ne’re-ending day now before us,
With joys that shall be ever more!