"No more, my friends, shall I complain,
Though all my heart-strings ache;
Welcome disease, and every pain
That makes the cottage shake!
"Now let the tempest blow all round,
Now swell the surges high,
And beat this house of bondage down
To let the stranger fly!
"I have a mansion built above
By the eternal hand;
And should the earth's old basis move,
My heavenly house must stand.
"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Be earth with all her scenes withdrawn;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;