Verses

Alone Lord God, in Whom our trust and peace, Our love and our desire, glow bright with hope; Lift us above this transitory scope Of earth, these pleasures that begin and cease, This moon which wanes, these seasons which decrease; We turn to Thee; as on an eastern slope Wheat feels the dawn beneath night’s lingering cope, Bending and stretching sunward ere it sees. Alone Lord God, we see not yet we know; By love we dwell with patience and desire, And loving so and so desiring pray; Thy Will be done in earth as heaven to-day; As yesterday it was, tomorrow so; Love offering love on love’s self-feeding fire.

Seven vials hold Thy wrath: but what can hold Thy mercy save Thine own Infinitude Boundlessly overflowing with all good, All lovingkindness, all delights untold? Thy Love, of each created love the mould; Thyself, of all the empty plenitude; Heard of at Ephrata, found in the Wood, For ever One, the Same, and Manifold. Lord, give us grace to tremble with that dove Which Ark-bound winged its solitary way And over past the Deluge in a day, Whom Noah’s hand pulled in and comforted: For we who much more hang upon Thy Love Behold its shadow in the deed he did.