Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903.
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HENCE is’t that I am carried towards the west, | |
This day, when my soul’s form 1 bends to the east; | |
Yet dare I almost be glad I do not see | |
That spectacle of too much weight for me. | |
Who sees God’s face, that is self-life, must die; | 5 |
What a death were it then to see God die! | |
It made His own lieutenant, Nature, shrink; | |
It made His footstool crack, and the sun wink. | |
Could I behold those hands which span the poles | |
And tune all spheres at once, pierced with those holes? | 10 |
Could I behold that endless height, which is | |
Zenith to us and our Antipodes, | |
Humbled below us? or that blood, which is | |
The seat of all our souls, if not of His, | |
Made dirt of dust? or that flesh, which was worn | 15 |
By God for His apparel, ragg’d and torn? | |
Though these things as I ride be from mine eye, | |
They’re present yet unto my memory; | |
For that looks toward them, and Thou look’st towards me | |
O Saviour, as Thou hang’st upon the tree. | 20 |
I turn my back to Thee but to receive | |
Corrections; till Thy mercies bid Thee leave. | |
O think me worth Thine anger, punish me, | |
Burn off my rust and my deformity; | |
Restore Thine image so much by Thy grace, | 25 |
That Thou may’st know me, and I’ll turn my face. | |