Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903.
By Frederick William Faber (1814–1863)Sunday
| THOUGH heaven’s above and earth’s below, | |
| Yet are they but one state, | |
| And each the other with sweet skill | |
| Doth interpenetrate. | |
| Yea, many a tie and office blest, | 5 |
| In earthly lots uneven, | |
| Hath an immortal place to fill, | |
| And is the root of heaven. | |
| And surely Sundays bright and calm, | |
| So calm, so bright as this, | 10 |
| Are tastes imparted from above | |
| Of higher Sabbath bliss. | |
| We own no gloomy ordinance, | |
| No weary Jewish day, | |
| But weekly Easters, ever bright | 15 |
| With pure domestic ray; | |
| A feast of thought, a feast of sight, | |
| A feast of joyous sound, | |
| A feast of thankful hearts, at rest, | |
| From labour’s wheel unbound; | 20 |
| A day of such homekeeping bliss | |
| As on the poor may wait, | |
| With all such lower joys as best | |
| Befit his human state. | |
| He sees among the hornbeam boughs | 25 |
| The little sparkling flood; | |
| The mill-wheel rests, a quiet thing | |
| Of black and mossy wood. | |
| He sees the fields lie in the sun, | |
| He hears the plovers crying; | 30 |
| The plough and harrow, both upturned, | |
| Are in the furrows lying. | |
| In simple faith, he may believe | |
| That earth’s diurnal way | |
| Doth, like its blessèd Maker, pause | 35 |
| Upon this hallowed day. | |
| And should he ask, the happy man! | |
| If heaven be aught like this;— | |
| ’Tis heaven within him, breeding there | |
| The love of quiet bliss. | 40 |
| Oh, leave the man, my fretful friend! | |
| To follow Nature’s ways, | |
| Nor breathe to him that Christian feasts | |
| Are no true holy days. | |
| Is earth to be as nothing here, | 45 |
| Where we are sons of earth! | |
| May not the body and the heart | |
| Share in the spirit’s mirth? | |
| When thou hast cut each earthly hold | |
| Whereto his soul may cling, | 50 |
| Will the poor creature left behind | |
| Be more a heavenly thing? | |
| Heaven fades away before our eyes, | |
| Heaven fades within our heart, | |
| Because in thought our heaven and earth | 55 |
| Are cast too far apart. | |