What lights are streaming, what flashes playing,
What joy in heaven when day is done!
What can the jubilant signs be saying,
Unless they shine for a victory won?
Over the armies twain retreating,
Over the daily foughten field,
Ever the watchers send their greeting,
Day after day is the end revealed.
Lift up your heads, ye faint and doubting,
Look, ye wounded and travel-sore;
All heaven is ready to break in shouting,
Hushing a joy that smiles the more.
In the long struggle of good and evil,
On the edges of time a light doth spring,
And over the new world's slow upheaval
Morning and night the angels sing.
The wonderful silence, flushing, burning,
Full of a rapture no words can say,
Burns in our hearts as eastward turning
We move through dark to another day,
Slowly the paling food of splendor,
Ebbing back to a jasper sea,
Dies away with a roselight tender,
And only the promise stays with me.
