Dear tokens of a pardoning God, We hail ye, one and all, As when our fathers walk'd abroad, Freed from their twelvemonths' thrall. How joyful from th' imprisoning ark Not blither, after showers, the Lark So home-bound sailors spring to shore, So happy souls, when life is o'er, What wins their first and fondest gaze And keeps it through a thousand days? Love imag'd in that cordial look Our Lord in Eden bends On souls that sin and earth forsook In time to die His friends. And what most welcome and serene Dawns on the Patriarch's eye, In all th' emerging hills so green, What but the gentle rainbow's gleam, That cannot bear the solar beam, Lord, if our fathers turn'd to thee With such adoring gaze, Wondering frail man thy light should see Without thy scorching blaze. Where is our love, and where our hearts, Have tried thy Spirit's winning arts, The Son of God in radiance beam'd Too bright for us to scan, But we may face the rays that stream'd From the mild Son of Man. G There, parted into rainbow hues, In sweet harmonious strife, We see celestial love diffuse Its light o'er Jesus' life. God, by His bow, vouchsafes to write As This truth in Heaven above; every lovely hue is Light, ASH-WEDNESDAY. When thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face, that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret. St. Matthew vi. 17. "YES-deep within and deeper yet "The tears that in the heart abide. "For why should Innocence be told "The pangs that guilty spirits bow? "The loving eye that watches thine 66 "Close as the air that wraps thee round Why in thy sorrow should it pine, q "Since never of thy sin it found? "And wherefore should the heathen see "What chains of darkness thee enslave, "And mocking say, Lo, this is he "Who own'd a God that could not save ?" Thus oft the mourner's wayward heart Too feeble for Confession's smart, Too proud to bear a pitying eye; Our sighs, and gently whisper all! Else let us keep our fast within, Till Heaven and we are quite alone, Then let the grief, the shame, the sin, Before the mercy-seat be thrown. 1 Wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God? Joel ii. 17. Between the porch and altar weep, Yet hoping near the shrine to keep Nor fear lest sympathy should fail— And from th' eternal home above With silent news of mercy steal? So Angels pause on tasks of love, To look where sorrowing sinners kneel. Or if no Angel pass that way, He who in secret sees, perchance May bid his own heart-warming ray Toward thee stream with kindlier glance, As when upon His drooping head His Father's light was pour'd from Heaven, What time, unshelter'd and unfed', Far in the wild His steps were driven. r St. Matt. iv. 1. |