Seite:Marsh Hallig 1856.djvu/230

  Though corn-field and vineyard no harvest give,
  With a hopeful heart I would always live ;
  Though faith be not sight in my earthly ill,
  Yet my breaking heart shall look heavenward still.
 
  The approach of winter reminded the strangers that
it was time to think of their departure. Mander and
Oswald were reluctant to fix a day for leaving a place
which had been, to them, an altar of the Most High.
This island was, indeed, their birth-place, for here they
had first learned, with a true sense of life, to lisp their
Father's name ; here they had found that rest from the
perplexity and confusion of their own spirits, for which
they had thirsted. Here the night had vanished, and
the morning-star had risen in their hearts. Both
shrank from returning to the now distasteful element
of their former life. There they must feel themselves
strangers, and they loved the hallig, which, though a
new, was a blessed home to them. It was with pain,
too, that they thought of leaving the pastor and his
wife. They respected him as their guide to light and
peace, as a man in whom knowledge was blended with
the most childlike faith ; a shepherd of souls, who,