Alfred H. Miles, ed. The Sacred Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.
By Hymns. II. Sunday (There is a Sabbath)Frederick William Faber (18141863)
T
A Sabbath stored above,
A service of eternal calm,
An altar-rite of love.
Where we shall ever wait
In mute or voiceful ministries
Upon the Immaculate.
With Christ’s Eternal Name,
Dipped, like bright censers, in the sea
Of molten glass and flame.
Our Heaven and Earth apart,
Lest thou shouldst wrong the Heaven begun
Already in thy heart.
Yet are they but one state,
And each the other with sweet skill
Doth interpenetrate.
In earthly lots uneven,
Hath an immortal place to fill,
And is a root of Heaven.
So calm, so bright as this,
Are tastes imparted from above
Of higher Sabbath bliss.
No weary Jewish day,
But weekly Easters, ever bright
With pure domestic ray;
A feast of joyous sound,
A feast of thankful hearts, at rest,
From labour’s wheel unbound;
As on the poor may wait,
With all such lower joys as best
Befit his human state.
The little sparkling flood;
The mill-wheel rests, a quiet thing
Of black and mossy wood.
He hears the plovers crying;
The plough and harrow, both upturned,
Are in the furrows lying.
That earth’s diurnal way
Doth, like its blessed Maker, pause
Upon this hallowed day.
If Heaven be aught like this:—
’Tis Heaven within him, breeding there
The love of quiet bliss.
To follow nature’s ways,
Nor breathe to him that Christian feasts
Are no true holydays.
When we are sons of Earth?
May not the body and the heart
Share in the spirit’s mirth?
Whereto his soul may cling,
Will the poor creature left behind
Be more a heavenly thing?
Heaven fades within our heart,
Because in thought our Heaven and Earth
Are cast too far apart.