"Yes, for 'tis there my Saviour reigns--
I long to see the God--
And his immortal strength sustains
The courts that cost him blood.
"Hark! from on high my Saviour calls:
I come, my Lord, my Love!
Devotion breaks the prison-walls,
And speeds my last remove."
His psalms and hymns are immeasurably better than his lyrics. Dreadful
some of them are; and I doubt if there is one from which we would not
wish stanzas, lines, and words absent. But some are very fine. The man
who could write such verses as these ought not to have written as he has
written:--
Had I a glance of thee, my God,
Kingdoms and men would vanish soon;
Vanish as though I saw them not,
As a dim candle dies at noon.
Then they might fight and rage and rave:
I should perceive the noise no more
Than we can hear a shaking leaf
While rattling thunders round us roar.
Some of his hymns will be sung, I fancy, so long as men praise God
together; for most heartily do I grant that of all hymns I know he has
produced the best for public use; but these bear a very small proportion
indeed to the mass of his labour. We cannot help wishing that he had
written about the twentieth part. We could not have too much of his best,
such as this:
Be earth with all her scenes withdrawn;
Let noise and vanity begone:
In secret silence of the mind
My heaven, and there my God, I find;
but there is no occasion for the best to be so plentiful: a little of it
will go a great way.
Pages:
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292