Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Alfred H. Miles, ed. The Sacred Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By “God draws a cloud over each gleaming morn”

Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904)

GOD draws a cloud over each gleaming morn,—

Wouldst thou ask why?

It is because all noblest things are born

In agony.

Only upon some cross of pain or woe

God’s Son may lie:

Each soul redeemed from self and sin must know

Its Calvary.

Yet we must crave neither for joy nor grief;

God chooses best:

He only knows our sick souls’ best relief,

And gives us rest.

More than our feeble hearts can ever pine

For holiness,

That Father in His tenderness divine,

Yearneth to bless.

He never sends a joy not meant in love,

Still less a pain:

Our gratitude the sunlight falls to prove;

Our faith, the rain.

In His hands we are safe. We falter on

Through storm and mire:

Above, beside, around us, there is One

Will never tire.

What though we fall,—and bruised and wounded lie,

Our lips in dust!

God’s arm shall lift us up to victory!

In Him we trust.

For neither life nor death, nor things below,

Nor things above,

Can ever sever us, that we should go

From His great love.