Do woes afflict? lift up your soul
To him, who bids the thunder roll!
And fearless, brave the stormy hour,
Secure in his protecting pow'r,
Who sends distress your faith to try,
And your heart to purify.
Abroad, at home; in weal, in woe;
That service, which to heav'n you owe,
That bounden service duly pay,
And God shall be your strength alway.
He only to the heart can give
Peace and true pleasure, while you
He only, when you yield your breath,
Can guide you thro' the vale of death.
He can, he will, from out the dust,
Raise the blest spirits of the just:
Heal every wound; hush every fear;
From every eye wipe every tear;
And place them where distress is o'er,
And pleasure dwells for evermore.
THEN rose the choral hymn of praise,
And trump and timbrel answered keen;
And Zion's daughters pour'd their lays
With priests' and warriors' voice between.
No portents now our foes amaze,
Forsaken Israel wanders lone;
Our fathers would not know thy ways,
And thou hast left them to their own.
But present still, though now unseen,
When brightly shines the prosperous day;
Be thoughts of thee a cloudy screen,
To temper the deceitful ray.
And Oh! when stoops on Judah's path,
In shade and storm, the frequent night:
Be Thou, long-suffering, slow to wrath,
A burning and a shining light!
Our harps we left by Babel's streams,
The tyrant's jest, the Gentile's scorn;
No censer round our altar beams,
And mute are timbrel, trump, and horn.
But Thou hast said, the blood of goat,
The flesh of rams, I will not prize:
A contrite heart, a humble thought,
Are mine accepted sacrifice.
When Israel, of the Lord beloved,
Out from the land of bondage came,
Her father's God before her moved,
An awful guide, in smoke and flame.
By day along the astonish'd lands,
The cloudy pillar glided slow;
By night Arabia's crimson'd sands
Returned the fiery column's glow.
EVEN thus amid thy pride and luxury,
O earth! shall that last coming burst on thee,
That secret coming of the Son of Man.
When all the cherub-throning clouds shall shine,
Irradiate with his bright advancing sign:
When that Great Husbandman shall wave his fan, Sweeping, like chaff, thy wealth and pomp away: Still to the noon-tide of that nightless day,
Shalt thou thy wonted dissolute course maintain. Along the busy mart and crowded street, The buyer and the seller still shall meet,
And marriage feasts begin their jocund strain: Still to the pouring out the cup of woe;
Till earth, a drunkard, reeling to and fro,
And mountains molten by his burning feet,
And heaven, his presence own, all red with furnace heat.
The hundred-gated cities, then,
The towers and temples, nam'd of men,
Eternal, and the thrones of kings;
The gilded summer palaces,
The courtly bowers of love and ease,
Where still the bird of pleasure sings:
Ask ye the destiny of them?
Go gaze on fallen Jerusalem!
Yea, mightier names are in the fatal roll,
'Gainst earth and heaven God's standard is unfurl'd,
The skies are shrivell'd like a burning scroll,
And the vast common doom ensepulchres the world.
Oh! who shall then survive?
Oh! who shall stand and live?
When all that hath been is no more:
When for the round earth hung in air,
With all its constellations fair,
In the sky's azure canopy:
When for the breathing earth, and sparkling sea,
Is but a fiery deluge without shore,
Heaving along the abyss profound and dark,
A fiery deluge, and without an ark.
Lord of all power, when thou art there alone
On thy eternal fiery-wheeled throne,
That in its high meridian noon
Needs not the perish'd sun nor moon:
When thou art there in thy presiding state,
Wide-sceptered monarch o'er the realm of doom:
When from the sea depths, from earth's darkest womb,
The dead of all the ages round thee wait:
And when the tribes of wickedness are strewn
Like forest leaves in the autumn of thine ire:
Faithful and true thou still wilt save thine own!
The saints shall dwell within th' unharming fire.
Each white robe spotless, blooming every palm.
Even safe as we, by this still fountain's side,
So shall the church, thy bright and mystic bride,
Sit on the stormy gulf a halcyon bird of calm.
Yes, mid yon angry and destroying signs,
O'er us the rainbow of thy mercy shines,
We hail, we bless the covenant of its beam,
Almighty to avenge, Aimightiest to redeen!
FOR thou wert born of woman! thou didst come,
O Holiest to this world of sin and gloom,
Not in thy dread omnipotent array;
And not by thunders strew'd was thy tempestuous road;
Nor indignation burnt before thee on thy way.
But thee, a soft and naked child,
Thy mother undefiled,
In the rude manger laid to rest
From off her virgin breast.
The heavens were not commanded to prepare
A gorgeous canopy of golden air:
Nor stoop'd their lamps th' enthroned fires on high:
A single silent star came wandering from afar,
Gliding uncheck'd and calm along the liquid sky;
The castern sages leading on
As at a kingly throne,
To lay their gold and odours sweet
Before thy infant feet.
The earth and ocean were not hush'd to hear
Bright harmony from every starry sphere;
Nor at thy presence brake the voice of song
From all the cherub choirs; and seraph's burning lyres Pour'd thro' the host of heaven the charmed clouds
One angel troop the strain began,
Of all the race of man
By simple shepherds heard alone,
That soft Hosanna's tone.
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