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Home  »  The Poets’ Bible  »  “He shall bring all Things to your Remembrance”

W. Garrett Horder, comp. The Poets’ Bible: New Testament. 1895.

“He shall bring all Things to your Remembrance”

Edward Hayes Plumptre (1821–1891)

JOHN XIV. 26.

THE YEARS behind them lay,

Far out of sight;

Each gracious word by day,

Each prayer by night;

But dim, and weak, and faint their memory proved,

They scarce could tell the words and acts of Him they loved.

Words full of grace and power

For Angel’s thought,

The lonely midnight hour

The sense o’erwrought,—

These shone far off in dim and hazy gleam,

As when one wakes from sleep and finds ’tis but a dream.

So when man’s subtle skill

Paints some loved face,

Bids sunbeams work his will

On scenes of grace,

Too soon the light-born picture fades away,

That living face and form, that landscape may not stay.

What spell shall then avail

To stay its flight,

To fix it ere it fail

All out of sight;

What flash from heaven, or quick, electric thrill

Can once again the dull cold grey with life refill?

For them the spell was found,

The hour arrived;

Hope was with memory crowned,

Old scenes revived;

All He had said or done on shore or sea,

In crowded Temple courts, or wilds of Galilee.

Bethsaida’s grassy height,

The noon-tide heat,

White waves in stormy night,

The still retreat,

The morning mist, the fire upon the beach,

The eager, naked plunge that Presence loved to reach.

So every look and glance

Rose clear to view,

Strong prayer’s ecstatic trance,

Seen but by few,

Wonder and anger, pity, love, and joy,

Stern frown for feigning Scribe, and smiles for fisher’s boy.

Strange sayings, dark and deep,

Were now made clear;

High wisdom they could keep,

Once hard to bear;

New meanings flashed upon the inward eye,

And brought the buried past once more to fancy nigh.

Ah, Lord, we too forget

What once we knew;

But He is with us yet,

That Spirit true;

He will old thoughts, hope, fear, and love revive,

And keep Faith’s brightest dreams in heart and soul alive.

He will make all things clear,

That Lord of Truth,

In withered age and sear,

Renew our youth;

We with cleans’d eyes through shadows see the Form,

And hear the well-known Voice through mutterings of the storm.