God's Music

God's Music

Since ever the world was fashioned,
Water and air and sod,
A music of divers meanings.
Has flowed from the hand of God.
In valley and gorge and upland.
On stormy mountain height.
He makes him a harp of the forest.
He sweeps the chords with might.
He puts forth his hand to the ocean.
He speaks and the waters flow -
Now in a chorus of thunder,
Now in a cadence low.
He touches the waving flower-bells.
He plays on the woodland streams -
A tender song - like a mother
Sings to her child in dreams.
But the music divinest and dearest.
Since ever the world began,
Is the manifold passionate music
He draws from the heart of man.
 

Temple Bar.

Thine Easter Day

Thine Easter Day 

by Mary Lowe Dickinson

Within thy heart is there an opened tomb?

Have God's strong angels rolled the stone

away?

Rises thy dead self from its bonds of clay?

Breaks Heaven's sweet light across the dark and

gloom?

Then is this day in truth thine Easter day!

If broken down are stony gates of pride,

If shrouding bands of earth are torn away,

If sin and wrath and scorn in thee have died,

Mourn not the past. The folded shroud beside

Angels will watch; - it is thine Easter day.

Rise, new-born soul, and put thine armor on;

Clasp round thy breast the garment of the light;

Gird up thy loins for battle. In the fight

He leads who upward from our sight has gone;

It is His day; there's no more death nor night,

No dark, no hurt, no more sharp shame nor loss;

All buried, hidden 'neath the grave's dark sod;

All ways forgotten, save the road He trod;

All burdens naught in sight of His - the cross;

All joy, alive and safe with Christ in God!

Now and Then

Now and Then

by Rev. W. C. Richards

Now - the tumult of the battle surging,

Now - the clouds that shut the warriors in;

Some who faint, and more the conflict urging -

Sighs and shouts together in the din!

Then - the splendor of the conquest shining,

Not a victor on the plain uncrowned;

Not a sigh for any loss repining -

Rapture waking all the sky around!

Now - our shrinkings from so many crosses,

And life's valleys watered by our tears.

Foolish tears we weep o'er little losses -

Trailing always through their mists our fears.

Then - the one cross we'll remember only -

Making of our crosses steps to Christ;

One dear cross whose passion vast and lonely

Bound us sweetly in redemption's tryst.

Now - the hidings of our Father's glory -

Walls that close around the earth and sun;

Weak unrest with nature's half-told story,

Knowledge only evermore begun.

Then - then the curtain of the universes

Rolled away, as mists at morning fled;

Each star that shines its history rehearses,

And ignorance, with sin and death, is dead.

Now - the anguish of all mortal sorrow.

Now, the groans that from our hearts are wrung,

Vain expectancies of bliss to-morrow,

All to-morrows with deep sackcloth hung.

Then - all sorrow from the bosom banished,

God himself to wipe our tears away;

Then - the cheats of earthly hopes evanished,

All to-morrows merged in heaven's to-day!

Now - the psalm that tells us death is strongest:

Strongest, surest of the foes we have;

Now - the waiting for the shadow's longest,

Till it falls upon the hallowed grave.

Then - the anthem of the resurrection -

We shall chant death's sure destructive o'er;

And shadows to the grave in dark direction,

From heaven's sunlight shall grow long no more.