Between the hills which upward soar
Fair valleys lie afar,
Where wakes no wind, no torrents roar
Our perfect peace to mar,
And many a mere to human eyes
Reflects the Peace of Paradise.
As ramparts high thy mountains rise
Against the wind and rain,
To break the strength of wintry skies
And rush of storms restrain.
And safe beneath them smiling spreads
The green expanse of fertile meads.
Though thou art little, dearest Wales,
Though strait thy limits are,
Upon thy mountains and thy vales
Are beauties rich and rare:
Thy bounds are narrowed, but to me
Sufficient thy variety.
The Sick Minister.
Even now my brethren preach the word,
While here I helpless lie;
How the thought frets me like a cord—
Their work and my infirmity.
Their every effort, Father, crown with power,
And all their utterance with Thy unction dower.
And unto me, here in my house, be given
Patient submission to the will of Heaven.
Time was, I thought one Sabbath’s rest would be—
One Sabbath’s rest with nought of toil to tire—
Like some fair island in a stormtoss’d sea,
Or pause in music of the eternal choir.
But it is with my heart on this fair morn,
As with the reaper on a summer’s day,
Who hears the sickle sweeping through the corn,
And he for weakness needs at home must stay.
’Twixt us and men, us and the world’s wild din,
The Sabbath is a day of rest;
But betwixt us and God—because of sin—
A day of labour to each earnest breast.
And think not, till thou lie beneath the sod,
Preacher of Peace, there can be rest for thee,
Time is the week-tide of the sons of God,
Their Sabbath is—Eternity.