How long ye miserable blind <br />Shall idle dreams engage your mind, <br />How long the passions make their flight <br />At empty shadows of delight? <br />No more in paths of error stray, <br />The Lord thy Jesus is the way, <br />The spring of happiness, and where <br />Shou'd men seek happiness but there? <br />Then run to meet him at your need, <br />Run with boldness, run with speed, <br />For he forsook his own abode <br />To meet thee more than half the road. <br />He laid aside his radiant crown <br />And love for mankind brought him down <br />To thirst and hunger, pain and woe, <br />To wounds, to death it self below, <br />And he that suffer'd these alone <br />For all the World, despises none. <br />To bid the soul that's sick be clean, <br />To bring the lost to life again, <br />To comfort those that grieve for ill, <br />Is his peculiar goodness still. <br />And as the thoughts of parents run <br />Upon a dear and only son, <br />So kind a love his mercies shew, <br />So kind and more extreamly so. <br /> <br />Thrice happy men (or find a phrase <br />That speaks your bliss with greater praise) <br />Who most obedient to thy call <br />Leaving pleasures leaving all, <br />With heart with soul, with strength incline <br />O sweetest Jesu! to be thine; <br />Who know thy will, observe thy ways, <br />And in thy service spend their days: <br />E'en death that seems to set them free <br />But brings them closer still to thee.<br /><br />Thomas Parnell<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-way-to-happiness/
