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| O EARTH, | |
| I count the praises thou art worth, | |
| By thy waves that move aloud, | |
| By thy hills against the cloud, | |
| By thy valleys warm and green, | 5 |
| By the copses’ elms between, | |
| By their birds which, like a sprite | |
| Scatter’d by a strong delight | |
| Into fragments musical, | |
| Stir and sing in every bush; | 10 |
| By thy silver founts that fall, | |
| As if to entice the stars at night | |
| To thine heart; by grass and rush, | |
| And little weeds the children pull, | |
Mistook for flowers!
—O, beautiful | 15 |
| Art thou, Earth, albeit worse | |
| Than in heaven is callèd good! | |
| Good to us, that we may know | |
| Meekly from thy good to go; | |
| While the holy crying Blood, | 20 |
| Puts its music kind and low | |
| ’Twixt such ears as are not dull, | |
| And thine ancient curse! | |
| |
| Praisèd be the mosses soft | |
| In thy forest pathways oft, | 25 |
| And the thorns, which make us think | |
| Of the thornless river-brink | |
| Where the ransom’d tread; | |
| Praisèd be thy sunny gleams, | |
| And the storm, that worketh dreams | 30 |
| Of calm unfinishèd; | |
| Praisèd be thine active days, | |
| And thy night-time’s solemn need, | |
| When in God’s dear book we read | |
| No night shall be therein; | 35 |
| Praisèd be thy dwellings warm | |
| By household faggot’s cheerful blaze, | |
| Where, to hear of pardon’d sin, | |
| Pauseth oft the merry din, | |
| Save the babe’s upon the arm, | 40 |
| Who croweth to the crackling wood; | |
| Yea,—and, better understood, | |
| Praisèd be thy dwellings cold, | |
| Hid beneath the churchyard mould, | |
| Where the bodies of the saints, | 45 |
| Separate from earthly taints, | |
| Lie asleep, in blessing bound, | |
| Waiting for the trumpet’s sound | |
| To free them into blessing;—none | |
| Weeping more beneath the sun, | 50 |
| Though dangerous words of human love | |
| Be graven very near, above. | |
| |
| Earth, we Christians praise thee thus, | |
| Even for the change that comes, | |
| With a grief, from thee to us! | 55 |
| For thy cradles and thy tombs, | |
| For the pleasant corn and wine, | |
| And summer-heat; and also for | |
| The frost upon the sycamore, | |
| And hail upon the vine! | 60 |
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