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Isaac Watts
Contemporaries

Jonathan Swift
Thomas Gray

AUDIO POEMS

Last Rose of Summer
Thomas Moore
Know Then Thyself
Alexander Pope
El Dorado
Edgar Allan Poe
Trees
Joyce Kilmer
Antonio
Laura E. Richards
Love and Age
Thomas Love Peacock
My Native Land
Sir Walter Scott
The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost

A Prospect of Heaven
Makes Death Easy
by Isaac Watts

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

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

Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
  Stand dressed in living green:
So to the Jews old Canaan stood,
  While Jordan rolled between.

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

Oh could we make our doubts remove,
  These gloomy doubts that rise,
And see the Canaan that we love,
  With unbeclouded eyes;

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.

Often referred to as the "Father of English Hymnody", Isaac Watts was born in England in the late 17th century. Watts composed over 600 hymns, many of which are still in general use today, such as "Jesus Shall Reign," When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," and "We're Marching to Zion." Perhaps the most widely sung of all his hymns is the popular Christmas melody, "Joy to the World."