Blest with a healthful age, a quiet mind,
Content with little, to this work designed,
Which I at length have finished by thy aid,
And now my vows have at thy altar paid.
WRITTEN AT THE HOLY SEPULCHRE IN JERUSALEM
SAVIOUR of mankind, Man, Emmanuel!
Who sinless died for sin; who vanquished hell;
The first-fruits of the grave; whose life did give
Light to our darkness; in whose death we live :-
Oh! strengthen Thou my faith, convert my will,
That mine may thine obey; protect me still,
So that the latter death may not devour
My soul, sealed with thy seal. So in the hour
When Thou, (whose body sanctified this tomb,
Unjustly judged,) a glorious judge shalt come
To judge the world with justice, by that sign
may be known and entertained for thine.
GOD is our refuge, our strong tower,
Securing by his mighty power,
When dangers threatened to devour.
Thus armed, no fears shall chill our blood,
Though earth no longer steadfast stood,
And shook our hills into the flood.
Although the troubled ocean rise,
In foaming billows to the skies,
And mountains shake with horrid noise ;
Clear streams purl from a crystal spring,
Which gladness to God's city bring,
The mansion of th' Eternal King.
He in her centre takes his place:
What foe can her fair towers deface,
Protected by his early grace?
Tumultuary nations rose,
And armed troops our walls enclose,
And his feared voice unnerved our foes.
The Lord of hosts is on our side;
The God by Jacob magnified;
Our strength on whom we have relied.
Come, see the wonders He hath wrought, Who hath to desolation brought
Those kingdoms which our ruin sought.
He makes destructive war surcease;
The earth, deflowered of her increase,
Restores with universal peace.
He breaks their bows, unarms their quivers,
The bloody spear in pieces shivers,
Their chariots to the flame delivers.
Forbear, and know that I the Lord
Will by all nations be adored-
Praised with unanimous accord.
The Lord of Hosts is on our side;
The God by Jacob magnified;
Our strength on whom we have relied.
LORD! as the hart embossed with heat
Brays after the cool rivulet,
So sighs my soul for thee.
My soul thirsts for the living God:
When shall I enter his abode,
And there his beauty see?
Tears are my food both night and day; While, Where's thy God? they daily say; My soul in plaints I shed;
When I remember, how in throngs
We filled thy house with praise and songs; How I their dances led.
My soul, why art thou so depressed?
Why, O! thus troubled in my breast?
With grief so overthrown?
With constant hope on God await :
I yet his name shall celebrate,
For mercy timely shown.
My fainting heart within me pants:
My God, consider my complaints;
My songs shall praise thee still, Even from the vale where Jordan flows; Where Hermon his high forehead shows, From Mitzar's humble hill.
Deeps unto deeps enraged call,
When thy dark spouts of waters fall,
And dreadful tempest raves :
For all thy floods upon me burst,
And billows after billows thrust
To swallow in their graves.
But yet by day the Lord will charge
His ready mercy to enlarge
My soul, surprised with cares;
He gives my songs their argument:
God of my life, I will present
By night to thee my prayers:
And say, My God, my Rock, O why
Am I forgot, and mourning die,
By foes reduced to dust?
Their words, like weapons, pierce my bones:
While still they echo to my groans,
Where is the Lord thy trust?
My soul, why art thou so depressed?
O why so troubled in my breast?
Sunk underneath thy load!
With constant hope on God await :
For I his name shall celebrate,
My Saviour and my God.
As on Euphrates' shady banks we lay,
And there, O Sion, to thy ashes pay
Our funeral tears, our silent harps unstrung,
And unregarded on thy willows hung,
Lo! they who had thy desolation wrought,
And captive Judah unto Babel brought,
Deride the tears which from our sorrows spring;
And say, in scorn, A song of Sion sing.
Shall we profane our harps at their command,
Or holy hymns sing in a foreign land?
O Solyma! thou that art now become
A heap of stones, and to thyself a tomb,
When I forget thee, my dear mother, let
My fingers their melodious skill forget;
When I a joy disjoined from thine receive,
Then may my tongue unto my palate cleave.
Remember Edom, Lord, their cruel pride,
Who in the sack of wretched Salem cried,
Down with their buildings, rase them to the ground,
Nor let one stone be on another found.
Thou, Babylon, whose towers now touch the sky,
That shortly shalt as low in ruins lie,
Oh! happy! Oh! thrice happy they who shall
With equal cruelty revenge our fall!
That dash thy children's brains against the stones,
And without pity hear their dying groans.
O THOU, the Father of us all,
Our refuge from th' original;
That wert our God before
The airy mountains had their birth,
Or fabric of the peopled earth;
And art for evermore.
But frail man daily dying, must
At thy command return to dust;
Or should he ages last,
Ten thousand years are in thy sight
But like a quadrant of the night,
Or as a day that's past.
We, by thy torrent swept from hence,
An empty dream which mocks the sense,
And from the fancy flies;
Such as the beauty of the rose,
Which in the dewy morning blows,
Then hangs the head and dies.
Through daily anguish we expire,
Thy anger a consuming fire,
To our offences due.
Our sins (although by night concealed
By shame and fear) are all revealed,
And naked to thy view.
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