Eliza Scudder (1821–1896)

“We bless Thee … for the means of grace and for the hope of glory.”

FOR the rapt stillness of the place

Where sacred song and ordered prayer

Wait the unveiling of Thy face,

And seek Thy angels’ joys to share;

For souls won o’er to truth and right,

For wisdom dropping as the dew,

For Thy great Word in lines of light,

Made visible to mortal view;

For gladness of the summer morning,

For fair faint twilight’s lingering ray,

For forest’s and for field’s adorning,

And the wild ocean’s ceaseless play;

For flowers unsought, in desert places

Flashing enchantment on the sight;

For radiance on familiar faces

As they passed upward into light;

For blessings of the fruitful season,

For work and rest, for friends and home,

For the great gifts of thought and reason,—

To praise and bless Thee, Lord, we come.

Yes, and for weeping and for wailing,

For bitter hail and blighting frost,

For high hopes on the low earth trailing,

For sweet joys missed, for pure aims crost;

For lonely toil and tribulation,

And e’en for hidings of Thy face,—

For these Thy heralds of salvation,

Thy means and messengers of grace.

With joy supreme, with faith unbroken,

With worship passing thought or speech,

Of Thy dear love we hail each token,

And give Thee humble thanks for each.

For o’er our struggling and our sighing,

Now quenched in mist, now glimmering far

Above our living and our dying,

Hangs high in Heaven one beckoning star.

And when we gather up the story

Of all Thy mercies flowing free,

Crown of them all, that hope of glory,

Of growing ever nearer Thee.