WHY THEY LOVED HIM
So kindly was His love to us,
(We had not heard of love before),
That all our life grew glorious
When He had halted at our door.
So meekly did He love us men,
Though blind we were with shameful sin,
He touched our eyes with tears, and then
Led God's tall angels flaming in.
He dwelt with us a little space,
As mothers do in childhood's years;
And still we can discern His face
Wherever Joy or Love appears.
He made our virtues all His own,
And lent them grace we could not give;
And now our world seems His alone,
And while we live He seems to live.
He took our sorrows and our pain,
And hid their torture in His breast;
Till we received them back again
To find on each His grief impressed.
He clasped our children in His arms,
And showed us where their beauty shone;
He took from us our gray alarms,
And put Death's icy armor on.
So gentle were His ways with us
That crippled souls had ceased to sigh;
On them He laid His hands, and thus
They gloried at His passing by.
Without reproof or word of blame,
As mothers do in childhood's years,
He kissed our lips, in spite of shame,
And stayed the passage of our tears.
So tender was His love to us,
(We had not learnt to love before),
That we grew like to Him, and thus
Men sought His grace in us once more.
April fields and England's flowers,
English friends and April showers,
April voices o'er the sea
Calling, calling unto me:
Oh, why tarry, why delay!
Hither lies the meadow-way;
No such meadows shalt thou see,
Oh, come back to Arcady."
Happy English Arcady
Thou art calling, calling me
Through thin flutes as frail as Pan
Fingered, when long since he ran
Careless as these foreign flowers,
Trailing through these tropic bowers
All their largess of gold leaf,
Piling splendors sheaf on sheaf.
Some there be who think Pan dead,
Say his nymphs and flutings sped;
I know better, I have seen
Where his racing feet have been.
Still I hear the dead god's voice—
England's; Had my soul the choice,
It should wade through starry bloom
Knee-deep to the brown-burnt broom.
April fields and April flowers,
April friends and April showers,
England shouting o'er the sea,
Calling, calling unto me.