Daily Reading for November 1 • The Feast of All Saints
Joy of my life while left me here!
And still my Love!
How in thy absence thou dost steer
Me from above!
A life well led
This truth commends,
With quick or dead
It never ends.
Stars are of mighty use; the night
Is dark, and long;
The road foul; and where one goes right,
Six may go wrong.
One twinkling ray,
Shot o’er some cloud,
May clear much way,
And guide a crowd.
God’s saints are shining lights: who stays
Here long must pass
O’er dark hills, swift streams, and steep ways
As smooth as glass;
But these all night,
Like candles, shed
Their beams, and light
Us into bed.
They are—indeed—our pillar fires,
Seen as we go;
They are that City’s shining spires
We travel to :
A swordlike gleam
Kept man for sin
First out; this beam
Will guide him in.
From “Joy of My Life While Left Me Here” by Henry Vaughan, in The Poems of Henry Vaughan, edited by E. K. Chambers (London: Lawrence & Bullen Ltd., 1896).