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Home  »  The Sacred Poets of the Nineteenth Century  »  Sir Robert Grant (1779–1838)

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

By Sacred Poems. II. Litany (“Saviour, when in dust to Thee”)

Sir Robert Grant (1779–1838)

SAVIOUR, when in dust to Thee

Low we bow th’ adoring knee,

When repentant, to the skies

Scarce we lift our weeping eyes;

O by all Thy pains and woe,

Suffered once for man below,

Bending from Thy throne on high,

Hear our solemn Litany!

By Thy helpless infant years,

By Thy life of want and tears

By Thy days of sore distress,

In the savage wilderness,

By the dread mysterious hour

Of the insulting tempter’s power;

Turn, O turn a favouring eye,

Hear our solemn Litany!

By the sacred griefs that wept

O’er the grave where Lazarus slept;

By the boding tears that flow’d

Over Salem’s loved abode;

By the anguish’d sigh that told

Treachery lurked within Thy fold,

From Thy seat above the sky,

Hear our solemn Litany!

By Thine hour of dire despair,

By Thine agony of pray’r;

By the cross, the nail, the thorn,

Piercing spear and torturing scorn;

By the gloom that veil’d the skies

O’er the dreadful sacrifice,

Listen to our humble cry!

Hear our solemn Litany!

By Thy deep expiring groan,

By the sad sepulchral stone,

By the vault whose dark abode

Held in vain the rising God!

O! from earth to heaven restor’d,

Mighty, re-ascended Lord,

Listen, listen to the cry

Of our solemn Litany!