What Praise Is on Our Lips?

WHAT praise is on our lips, what cheer

To Him, who sitteth on His throne?

Firm master of the changing year,

Who leads us on from zone to zone,

He gave to us His sacred cause—

The practice of His ancient laws.

From lands far off our fathers came,

Lone pilgrims of a thousand years,

To bear the burden of a name

Amid new ways and unlaid fears—

Still rings His message and His cause:

To teach all men His sacred laws.

No warring hosts our grand-sires marched,

Sword-bound and panting for the spoil,

Long suffering from want, and parched,

They mixed their heart throbs with the soil

That here, beneath these skies, His cause

Might live in men and be their laws.

The law of love was in their heart,

Made warm through grief, grown strong through pain,

They mingled at the wharf and mart

Unweaponing the strife of gain—

To make all men uphold His cause

And write upon their hearts His laws.

Long years are done. And we this day

Praise Him who prospered land and men;

Our star of glory fades away

To spaces hidden from our ken,

Unless each one espouse His cause,

Whose love gave us the Book of Laws.

O Lord, who guided Israel’s host

Across strange seas, to shores unknown,

Without Thee all our hope is lost

And seaward all our pomp is blown:—

Still stands the edict of His cause

Proclaimed of old in Sinai’s laws.