The storm is laid—and now
In His meek power He climbs the mountain’s brow,
Who bade the waves go sleep,
And lashed the vexed fiends to their yawning deep.
How on a rock they stand,
Who watch His eye, and hold His guiding hand!
Not half so fixed, amid her vassal hills,
Rises the holy pile that Kedron’s valley fills.
And wilt thou seek again
Thy howling waste, thy charnel-house and chain,
And with the demons be,
Rather than clasp thine own Deliverer’s knee?
Sure ’tis no Heaven-bred awe
That bids thee from His healing touch withdraw;
The world and He are struggling in thine heart,
And in thy reckless mood thou bidd’st thy Lord depart.
He, merciful and mild,
As erst, beholding, loves His wayward child;
When souls of highest birth
Waste their impassioned might on dreams of earth,
He opens Nature’s book,
And on His glorious Gospel bids them look,
Till, by such chords as rule the choirs above,
Their lawless cries are tuned to hymns of perfect love.
Fifth Sunday after Epiphany.
Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither His ear heavy, that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have separated between you and your God. Isaiah lix. 1, 2.
“Wake, arm Divine! awake,
Eye of the only Wise!
Now for Thy glory’s sake,
Saviour and God, arise,
And may Thine ear, that sealèd seems,
In pity mark our mournful themes!”
Thus in her lonely hour
Thy Church is fain to cry,
As if Thy love and power
Were vanished from her sky;
Yet God is there, and at His side
He triumphs, who for sinners died.
Ah! ’tis the world enthralls
The Heaven-betrothèd breast:
The traitor Sense recalls
The soaring soul from rest.
That bitter sigh was all for earth,
For glories gone and vanished mirth.
Age would to youth return,
Farther from Heaven would be,
To feel the wildfire burn,
On idolising knee
Again to fall, and rob Thy shrine
Of hearts, the right of Love Divine.
Lord of this erring flock!
Thou whose soft showers distil
On ocean waste or rock,
Free as on Hermon hill,
Do Thou our craven spirits cheer,
And shame away the selfish tear.