Give ear, O Joshua! This morn
Jehovah said: “Get thee to Pisgah's height
And view the land that shall be Israel's
Before thou diest. My servant Joshua
Shall judge mine hosts.”


The strength of God be thine.
The guiding of this people in His way,
Henceforth thy charge, needs wisdom of ripe years
And counsel of experience, both which
Are thine, for thou hast had the discipline
Of God in His best school, the wilderness.

My years are many, but my step is firm
As when in youth I strode along the Nile
In Heliopolis of Mizraim.
It seems but yesterday. I see even now
That line 'twixt green and gray, where leaf and flower
And all life terminate in seas of sand.
As in the olden days, the walls of On
Reflect the sunset glow, and purple fires
Enflame the summits of the Pyramids.
My thought, so hospitable to the past,
Would storm thy heart with vivid memories
And pictures of mine ancient deeds and dreams.
I saw in Egypt many tortured slaves
Of mine own blood, and dreamed of Israel free.
My heart, of royal nurture, was too hot
For counsel. Prompted by the sudden spur
Of awful wrong, I slew a brutal man
And fled self-banished to the desert. When
'Twas dark I journeyed on, hiding by day
Till, Etham's desert passed, and Elim's spring
Beneath the stately palms, eastward I bent,
And fared, with Horeb's solemn peak my guide,
To Midian's land. At last, I came to plains
Where the rocks ceased and nature was more kind.
There maiden-shepherds kept their flocks, and wells
And pastures were. The Midian shepherd-priest
Made me his guest and afterwards his son.

There I found God, and dwelt with Him who spake
In thunder and whose whispers were the stars.
From intimation of His presence came
The strange new hope that He was not aloof,
But near; and through the lonely years, this sense
To deep conviction grew. When silence reigned
Among the rocks, and, in my soul, God's fear,
A subtle spirit hovered o'er the plains
With wings of peace; and when the thunders blared
They seemed like hosts that to the battle marched.
Whose conchs and horns rang ling'ringly afar,
And shook the echoing hills with storms. But when
Jehovah's word came clearest, lo, the place
Was thrilled with awful majesty and peace
That swept with sunlike radiance through my soul.

One day, when Sinai's peak, more than its wont,
Shone golden, so its gleam was flung afar
Across the ancient solitudes, and flamed
The tamarisks with fire, till all the land
Quivered with light, while I afresh bemoaned
My kinsmen-slaves who builded Pithom's walls,
A sense of power into my eager soul
Surged mightily. I knew that God had given
The strength to do the thing I long had dreamed.

I went to Egypt in that day of God,—
The desert life had made me bold and strong—
The Pharaoh's will frustrated, led his slaves
Into the wilderness, so long my home.
Thou wilt recall the wind-dissevered sea,
The stony waste, rock-sentinelled and drear,
The weary going of the murm'ring hosts,
The manna food; how snow-tipped Horeb rose
Ensheathed in blue. There I, apart with God,
Was wrapt in wild rock-robes of solitude,
In grave communion with Jehovah's heart.
There wisdom came to sift Egyptian law,
Advance the leaden dawn of other gods
To great Jehovah's noon, and purge with light
The codes of Babylon. Ten words emerged,
The law of God to everlasting years.

The rest thou knowest well, for thou didst share
The irk of all the fear and faithlessness
Of that dumb horde that in the desert died.
Now, in their place, yon hosts invincible,
Rugged as rocks that sentinel the plains
Of Ishmael, wait thy commanding word.
Jehovah is their shield and battle cry,
And all their foes shall melt before His will.

Now I shall see the plain of Gilead,
And Carmel where it riseth to the sea
From Sharon's vale, the palms of Jericho,
And all the glowing West. Then shall God hide
My dust amid the peaks close to His heavens.
Nebo shall watch my tomb, Beth-Peor guard,
And Pisgah stand, my peerless monument
Throughout the star-crowned years.