Sabbath Hymn on the Mountains

John Stuart Blackie (1809–1895)

PRAISE ye the Lord!

Not in the temple of shapeliest mould,

Polished with marble and gleaming with gold,

Piled upon pillars of slenderest grace,

But here in the blue sky’s luminous face,

Praise ye the Lord!

Not where the organ’s melodious wave

Dies ’neath the rafters that narrow the nave,

But here with the free wind’s wandering sweep,

Here with the billow that booms from the deep,

Praise ye the Lord!

Not where the pale-faced multitude meet

In the sweltering lane and the dun-visaged street,

But here where bright ocean, thick sown with green isles,

Feeds the glad eye with a harvest of smiles,

Praise ye the Lord!

Here where the strength of the old granite Ben

Towers o’er the greenswarded grace of the glen,

Where the birch flings its fragrance abroad on the hill,

And the bee of the heather-bloom wanders at will,

Praise ye the Lord!

Here where the loch, the dark mountain’s fair daughter,

Down the red scaur flings the white-streaming water,

Leaping and tossing and swirling forever,

Down to the bed of the smooth-rolling river,

Praise ye the Lord!

Not where the voice of a preacher instructs you,

Not where the hand of a mortal conducts you,

But where the bright welkin in scripture of glory

Blazons creation’s miraculous story,

Praise ye the Lord!

The wind and the welkin, the sun and the river,

Weaving a tissue of wonders forever;

The mead and the mountain, the flower and the tree,

What is their pomp, but a vision of thee,

Wonderful Lord?

Praise ye the Lord!

Not in the square-hewn, many-tiered pile,

Not in the long-drawn, dim-shadowed aisle,

But where the bright world, with age never hoary,

Flashes her brightness and thunders his glory,

Praise ye the Lord!