There Is a Land of Pure Delight

Isaac Watts · 1707

Catalog grade guidance: 3–5 — Classic Watts hymn widely used in Christian schools.

26 content lines · 146 words · Est. recitation about 1 min 28 sec (approx.)

Public-domain text for reading and recitation practice. Source: Project Gutenberg #13341.Estimated time uses ~120 words/minute plus short pauses—not a contest rule.

Hymn 2:66.
A prospect of heaven makes death easy.

1 There is a land of pure delight
Where saints immortal reign,
Infinite day excludes the night,
And pleasures banish pain.

2 There everlasting spring abides,
And never withering flowers:
Death like a narrow sea divides
This heavenly land from ours.

3 [Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood,
Stand dress'd in living green
So to the Jews old Canaan stood,
While Jordan roll'd between.

4 But timorous mortals start and shrink
To cross this narrow sea,
And linger shivering on the brink,
And fear to launch away.]

5 O! could we make our doubts remove,
These gloomy doubts that rise,
And see the Canaan that we love,
With unbeclouded eyes!

6 Could we but climb where Moses stood,
And view the landscape o'er,
Not Jordan's stream, nor death's cold flood,
Should fright us from the shore.