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Elijah Parish Lovejoy (1802-1837) was a young Presbyterian minister and abolitionist journalist who was murdered in Illinois for his outspoken anti-slavery views. Senseless violence such as that which led to his death has plagued our world since Cain killed Abel, and it seems widespread in our day. Such things make believers long for heaven. Lovejoy wrote of this longing in an 1827 poem which he titled
THERE IS AN ISLE
There is an isle, a lovely isle,
Which ocean depth’s embrace,
Nor man’s deceit, nor woman’s wile,
Hath ever found the place.
How sweet ‘twould be, if I could find
This isle, and leave the world behind.See from the heaven-born Pleiades,
Comes the young, blooming spring;
Her light car yoked unto a breeze,
With aromatic wing;
Gaily she drives around its shores,
And scatters all her purple stores.Ten thousand Naiads sport along,
Her ever joyous train;
And life and love are poured in song,
And bliss in every strain;
So soft, so sweet, so bland the while,
That even despair itself would smile.Eternal calm hangs o’er its plains,
Its skies are ever fair;
In nectar’d dew descends its rains;
No fire-charged clouds are there,
To speak in thunder from the path
Of God come down to earth in wrath.Its silvery streams o’er crystals flow,
Where sparkling diamonds be,
And, sweetly murmuring, gently go,
To meet a stormless sea;
And in their clear, reflective tide,
In golden scales the fishes glide.Melodious songsters fill its groves,
To harmony attuned;
Where saints and seraphs tell their lvoes,
Their golden harps around,
In strains as soft as charmed the hours,
When man was blest in Eden’s bowers.No birds of blood, nor beasts of prey,
Can in its woodlands breathe;
Peace spreads her wing o’er ev’ry spray,
And beauty sleeps beneath;
Or wakes to joy her varying note,
From ev’ry golden-feather’d throat.No gloomy morning ever gleams
Upon this isle so fair;
No tainted breeze from guilty climes
Infects the evening air;
For in the light of ev’ry star
Are angels watching from afar.Oh! I would leave this wretched world,
Where hope can hardly smile;
And go on wings by faith unfurled,
To reach this happy isle;
But that some ties still bind me here,
Which while they fetter, still endear.And I would not that these should part,
Till He, and He alone,
Who would them finely round my heart,
Has cut them one by one:
And when the last is severed, then
Upon this isle ‘twill heal again.
