Thou mourn’st because sin lingers still
In Christ’s new heaven and earth;
Because our rebel works and will
Stain our immortal birth:
Because, as Love and Prayer grow cold,
The Saviour hides His face,
And worldlings blot the temple’s gold
With uses vile and base.
Hence all thy groans and travail pains,
Hence, till thy God return,
In Wisdom’s ear thy blithest strains,
Oh Nature, seem to mourn.
Fifth Sunday after Trinity.
And Simon answering said unto Him, Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing; nevertheless at Thy word I will let down the net. And when they had this done, they inclosed a great multitude of fishes: and their net brake. St. Luke v. 5, 6.
“The livelong night we’ve toiled in vain,
But at Thy gracious word
I will let down the net again:—
Do Thou Thy will, O Lord!”
So spake the weary fisher, spent
With bootless darkling toil,
Yet on his Master’s bidding bent
For love and not for spoil.
So day by day and week by week,
In sad and weary thought,
They muse, whom God hath set to seek
The souls His Christ hath bought.
For not upon a tranquil lake
Our pleasant task we ply,
Where all along our glistening wake
The softest moonbeams lie;
Where rippling wave and dashing oar
Our midnight chant attend,
Or whispering palm-leaves from the shore
With midnight silence blend.