YE whose hearts are beating high | |
| With the pulse of Poesy, | |
| Heirs of more than royal race, | |
| Fram’d by Heaven’s peculiar grace, | |
| God’s own work to do on earth | 5 |
| (If the word be not too bold), | |
| Giving virtue a new birth, | |
| And a life that ne’er grows old— | |
| |
| Sovereign masters of all hearts! | |
| Know ye, who hath set your parts? | 10 |
| He who gave you breath to sing, | |
| By whose strength ye sweep the string, | |
| He hath chosen you, to lead | |
| His Hosannas here below;— | |
| Mount, and claim your glorious meed; | 15 |
| Linger not with sin and woe. | |
| |
| But if ye should hold your peace, | |
| Deem not that the song would cease— | |
| Angels round His glory-throne, | |
| Stars, His guiding hand that own, | 20 |
| Flowers, that grow beneath our feet, | |
| Stones in earth’s dark womb that rest, | |
| High and low in choir shall meet, | |
| Ere His Name shall be unblest. | |
| |
| Lord, by every minstrel tongue | 25 |
| Be Thy praise so duly sung, | |
| That Thine Angels’ harps may ne’er | |
| Fail to find fit echoing here: | |
| We the while, of meaner birth, | |
| Who in that divinest spell | 30 |
| Dare not hope to join on earth, | |
| Give us grace to listen well. | |
| |
| But should thankless silence seal | |
| Lips, that might half Heaven reveal, | |
| Should bards in idol-hymns profane | 35 |
| The sacred soul-enthralling strain, | |
| (As in this bad world below | |
| Noblest things find vilest using), | |
| Then, Thy power and mercy show, | |
| In vile things noble breath infusing; | 40 |
| |
| Then waken into sound divine | |
| The very pavement of Thy shrine, | |
| Till we, like Heaven’s star-sprinkled floor, | |
| Faintly give back what we adore. | |
| Childlike though the voices be, | 45 |
| And untunable the parts, | |
| Thou wilt own the minstrelsy, | |
| If it flow from childlike hearts. | |
| |
