Library of the World's Best Literature/There Is a Land of Pure Delight

by Isaac Watts

There is a land of pure delight
   Where saints immortal reign;
Infinite day excludes the night,
   And pleasures banish pain.

There everlasting spring abides,
   And never-withering flowers;
Death like a narrow sea divides
   This heavenly land from ours.

Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
   Stand dressed in living green;
So to the Jews old Canaan stood,
   While Jordan rolled between.

But timorous mortals start and shrink
   To cross this narrow sea,
And linger shivering on the brink,
   And fear to launch away.

Oh! could we make our doubts remove,—
   These gloomy doubts that rise,—
And see the Canaan that we love
   With unbeclouded eyes:

Could we but climb where Moses stood,
   And view the landscape o'er,
Not Jordan's stream, nor Death's cold flood
   Should fright us from the shore.