EVENING THANKSGIVING AND PRAYER.
Sinking down to thy rest,
In the deep crimson West,
Great God! thou hast taught us repose;
With thy promised return,
Without doubting, we learn,
To wait for thy further disclose.
In thy tenement high,
Blazing over the sky,
Are thy sentinels, pledge of the night;
And we know by their shine,
That thy care is divine,
And we rest without fear, till the light
Springs again from the East
With its glory increased
By the wakening pulse of the day;
And we never will doubt,
That thy naked arm, stout,
Will drive all the shadows away.
Yet we cannot forebear,
To lift up our prayer,
For we know we are wanton and weak;
And if once thou shouldst fail,
Or thy face shouldst grow pale,
Where else in the world should we seek?
For a father so kind,
To a people so blind,
In our weakness, thy strength we may trace.
Then fail not to return,
Leave us never to mourn,
The wealth of thy daily embrace.
O continue, we pray,
To bring back the glad day;
Give us always, to look on thy face!
The trembling lisp of every human soul,
Of names more potent, then their own can be,
Breathes the same lesson through, from pole to pole
To prove the certitude of Deity.
Not every eye turned upward can behold
The face that faith alone shapes into form;
Not every hand can touch the gates of gold
That outward swing in welcome from the storm.
Yet is the “Abba Father” pendant from each tongue,
And every soul a furnace for its fires;
And sacred is each song in earnest sung,
When creature to Creator thus aspires.
We blindly grope in this, our broad of day,
The two eternities to thus unite;
The silk of infancy is turned to gray
Ere we have learned to tread the path aright.
We force our providences out of reach,
Throw back the hand our Father doth extend,
And shut our ears that he may vainly teach,
And all the wealth of heaven may expend
To warm us to reliance,— shall we dare
To sneer at those who grope? We grapple air
When it is all refulgent with our God,
And we may touch his garment's hem in prayer.