HIDDEN close from human eye | |
| Violets do love to lie, | |
| Only for the tell-tale air, | |
| No one could discover where: | |
| But there’s an Eye which on them dwells | 5 |
| With sunshine soft and true, | |
| A Hand which fills their purple bells | |
| With drops of morning dew. | |
| |
| Tho’ they love the shady nook, | |
| And with bee and babbling brook | 10 |
| Communing, with fragrant sigh, | |
| Live, and bloom, and breathe, and die; | |
| No gloomy anchorites are they, | |
| In lonely severance sad, | |
| But in their gentle, quiet way | 15 |
| They make God’s creatures glad. | |
| |
| So His hidden saints abound, | |
| Scatter’d everywhere around, | |
| Violets of Heav’nly birth, | |
| Perfuming all parts of earth; | 20 |
| Fed by the sun and dews of heav’n, | |
| They sleep not night nor day, | |
| Still giving back what they are giv’n | |
| In their own quiet way. | |
| |
| Theirs no plea for public place, | 25 |
| Modesty their fairest grace, | |
| So to soothe that none may know | |
| Whence the healing perfumes flow; | |
| Themselves, unseen by human eye, | |
| By human hand unsoil’d | 30 |
| Their soul’s immortal purity | |
| By thought of self unspoil’d. | |
| |
| There to grow in grace and love, | |
| Fitter for their place above; | |
| Useful in the humblest way, | 35 |
| Fragrant even in decay; | |
| And all the while their covenant | |
| With Heav’n and earth fulfil, | |
| The only thing of God they want, | |
| Power to do His will. | 40 |
| |
| So beneath the fig-tree’s shade, | |
| Where of old Nathaniel paid | |
| To the Lord his hidden vows; | |
| Through its broad umbrageous boughs, | |
| Upon the saint’s lone hour of need | 45 |
| Fell Heav’n’s approving smile, | |
| And own’d an Israelite indeed, | |
| In whom there was no guile. | |
| |
| Almost from himself conceal’d, | |
| Now to God he stands reveal’d; | 50 |
| Now the blessed fruit receiving, | |
| Which had grown from meek believing, | |
| The hidden saint his Lord ordains | |
| His messenger to be, | |
| To gather in far richer gains, | 55 |
| And greater things to see. | |
| |
| Thence the saint unknown and lowly, | |
| Set apart by God, and holy, | |
| Changed in office, and in name, | |
| Saint Bartholomew became; | 60 |
| And on his day the Church doth pray | |
| Of God, in Christ’s dear Name, | |
| To love that word which he believed, | |
| Preach, and receive the same. | |
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