Dear Father, good and just,
Let not my soul be sleeping
In sin, and pride, and lust.
If in my life Thou guide me
According to Thy will,
I may in death confide me
Into Thy keeping still.
The voice of gracious invitation heard in Franzén’s communion hymn, “Thine own, O loving Saviour,” has called millions of hungering souls to the Lord’s Supper. His hymn for the first communion of catechumens, “Come, O Jesus, and prepare me,” is also regarded as the most appealing of its kind in Swedish hymnody. The stirring note in his hymn of repentance, “Awake, the watchman crieth,” reveals Franzén as a poet of power and virility as well as a writer of the more meditative kind. The same solemn appeal, although expressed in less severe language, is also heard in his other call to repentance:
Ajar the temple gates are swinging,
Lo! still the grace of God is free.