Mean though I am--not wholly so,
Since quickened by thy breath:--
O lead me wheresoe'er I go,
Through this day's life or death.
This day, be bread and peace my lot:
All else beneath the sun
Thou know'st if best bestowed or not,
And let thy will be done.
To thee, whose temple is all space,
Whose altar, earth, sea, skies,
One chorus let all being raise!
All Nature's incense rise!
And now we come upon a strange little well in the desert. Few flowers
indeed shine upon its brink, and it flows with a somewhat unmusical
ripple: it is a well of the water of life notwithstanding, for its song
tells of the love and truth which are the grand power of God.
John Byrom, born in Manchester in the year 1691, a man whose strength of
thought and perception of truth greatly surpassed his poetic gifts, yet
delighted so entirely in the poetic form that he wrote much and chiefly
in it. After leaving Cambridge, he gained his livelihood for some time by
teaching a shorthand of his own invention, but was so distinguished as a
man of learning generally that he was chosen an F.R.S. in 1723. Coming
under the influence, probably through William Law, of the writings of
Jacob Boehme, the marvellous shoemaker of Goerlitz in Silesia, who lived in
the time of our Shakspere, and heartily adopting many of his views, he
has left us a number of religious poems, which are seldom so sweet in
music as they are profound in the metaphysics of religion.
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