O sweetly through the gloomy years

1 O sweetly through the gloomy years
That roll their dimming vail between,
The promised goodly land appears
Arrayed in never fading green.
And from that peaceful, happy clime,
Transporting bursts of song arise,
And, rolling through the mist of time,
Tell us of joy that never dies.

2 As voyagers on the stormy deep
Look for some bright and sunny bay
Where winds and waves are hushed in sleep,
And joy lights up the happy day,
So o'er the tossing sea of years
We glance the eye and stretch the hand
Where, robed in fadeless light, appears
The border of the shining land.

3 There angel hosts of glorious ones,
With sinless hearts and stainless hands,
Call us in glad and loving tones,
And bid us welcome to their bands.
Hark! how their harps and voices tell
The glories of that radiant strand,
And bid us breast the waves that swell
Between us and the shining land.

4 Ear hath not heard, eye hath not seen,
The glories of that home of song;
Though stormy billows roll between,
I go to join the angel throng.
But of the joys beyond the tide,
The welcomes on that golden strand,
The best shall be from Him who died
To bring me to the shining land.

Source: The Seventh-Day Adventist Hymn and Tune Book: for use in divine worship #994