Dr. David Breed, speaking of Faber's “unusual” imagination, says, “He got more out of language than any other poet of the English tongue, and used words—even simple words—so that they rendered him a service which no other poet ever secured from them.” The above hymns are characteristic to a degree, but the telling simplicity of his style—almost quaint at times—is more marked in “There's a Wideness in God's Mercy,” given on [p. 234].
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“BEYOND THE SMILING AND THE WEEPING.”
This song of hope—one of the most strangely tuneful and rune-like of Dr. Bonar's hymn-poems—is less frequently sung owing to the peculiarity of its stanza form. But it scarcely needs a staff of notes—
Beyond the smiling and the weeping
I shall be soon;
Beyond the waking and the sleeping,
Beyond the sowing and the reaping
I shall be soon.
Refrain