2-982-649 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"The Star in the East" - painted by H. Warren - the picture in the Royal Collection, 1858. 'Far guiding towards the promised land, All other stars before it paling, It gleams, where o'er yon sea of sand The lonely "desert-ships" are sailing: The Star of hope to mortals given, The Beacon-light of love and heaven. O, well he named thee, prophet wise, Thou Bethlehem, best beloved of God, Who saw in dreams that seed arise Which burst from out thy sacred sod! We follow where the patriarch led, And call thee still the "House of Bread." That heaven-born seed, that germ of love, Dropped by His hand, made green the waste...And O, there sprang 'neath God's blest feet No tares midst that unpoisoned wheat! On Bethlehem's fields lies hunger slain; There shall a world of starving souls Go feast: no blight is on the grain That o'er that land, like manna, rolls; The craving heart with peace refilling, The voice of tears in Rama stilling. Lost pilgrim, there thy footsteps bend; Crushed soul, turn there thy stricken eye, From paths whose thorns your feet shall rend, From this your stony Araby: Read yonder word, in light engraved-'Tis "Bethlehem," city of the saved!' By Eleanora L. Hervey. From the Christmas Supplement to the "Illustrated London News", 1858.