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Home  »  Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse  »  The Holy Eucharist

Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903.

By Richard Chenevix Trench (1807–1886)

The Holy Eucharist

 
HONEY in the lion’s mouth,
Emblem mystical, divine,
How the sweet and strong combine;
Cloven rock for Israel’s drouth;
Treasure-house of golden grain,        5
By our Joseph laid in store,
In his brethren’s famine sore
Freely to dispense again;
Dew on Gideon’s snowy fleece;
Well from bitter changed to sweet;        10
Shew-bread laid in order meet,
Bread whose cost doth not increase
Though no rain in April fall;
Horeb’s manna, freely given,
Showered in white dew from heaven,        15
Marvellous, angelical;
Weightiest bunch of Canaan’s vine;
Cake to strengthen and sustain
Through long days of desert pain;
Salem’s Monarch’s bread and wine;—        20
Thou the antidote shalt be
Of my sickness and my sin,
Consolation, medicine,
Life and sacrament to me.