The Wanderer from the Fold By Emily Jane Bronte "They that forsake the LORD shall be consumed." ~ Isaiah 1:28 ~ "The Lord is ... not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." ~ 2 Peter 3:9 ~ ow few, of all the hearts that loved, Are grieving for thee now! And why should mine, to-night, be moved With such a sense of woe? Too often, thus, when left alone Where none my thoughts can see, Comes back a word, a passing tone From thy strange history. Sometimes I seem to see thee rise, A glorious child again- All virtues beaming from thine eyes That ever honoured men- Courage and Truth, a generous breast Where Love and Gladness lay; A being whose very Memory blest And made the mourner gay. O fairly spread thy early sail, And fresh and pure and free Was the first impulse of the gale That urged life's wave for thee! Why did the pilot, too confiding, Dream o'er that Ocean's foam, And trust in Pleasure's careless guiding To bring his vessel home? For well he knew what dangers frowned, What mists would gather dim; What rocks and shelves and sands lay round Between his port and him. The very brightness of the sun, The splendour of the main, The wind that bore him wildly on Should not have warned in vain. An anxious gazer from the shore, I marked the whitening wave, And wept above thy fate the more Because I could not save. It recks not now, when all is over; But yet my heart will be A mourner still, though friend and lover Have both forgotten thee! "Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which He hath purchased with His own blood." ~ Acts 20:28 ~ "For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest He also spare not thee." ~ Romans 11:21 ~ "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us." ~ 1 John 2:19 ~