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Home  »  A Library of American Literature  »  “To me Thou Cam’st”

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

“To me Thou Cam’st”

By Theodore Parker (1810–1860)

[From his Note-Book in the possession of Mr. Frank B. Sanborn. Composed in the Winter of 1853–4.]

TO me thou cam’st, the earliest lamp of light,

When youthful day must sadly disappear;

A star prophetic in a world of night,

Revealing what a heaven of love was near;

And full of rapture at thy joyous sight,

I journeyed fearless on the starlight way;

A thousand other lights came forth on hight,

But queenliest of all still shone thy ray:

O blessed lamp of Beauty and of Love,

How long I’ve felt thy shining far away!

Now, when the morn has chased the shadows gray,

Still guided by thy memory forth I rove.

I’ll journey on, till dark still lighter prove,

And Star and Pilgrim meet where all is Day.