Calm me, my God, and keep me calm,
While these hot breezes blow;
Be like the night-dew's cooling balm
Upon earth's fevered brow.
Calm me, my God, and keep me calm,
Soft resting on thy breast;
Soothe me with holy hymn and psalm
And bid my spirit rest.
Yes, keep me calm, though loud and rude
The sounds my ear that greet;
Calm in the closet's solitude,
Calm in the bustling street;
Calm in the hour of buoyant health,
Calm in my hour of pain,
Calm in my poverty or wealth,
Calm in my loss or gain;
Calm when the great world's news with power
My listening spirit stir;
Let not the tidings of the hour
E'er find too fond an ear;
Calm as the ray of sun or star
Which storms assail in vain;
Moving unruffled through earth's war,
The eternal calm to gain.
--Horatius Bonar.
Father, take not away
The burden of the day,
But help me that I bear it
As Christ his burden bore
When cross and thorn he wore
And none with him could share it;
In his name help I pray!
I only ask for grace
To see that patient face
And my impatient one;
Ask that mine grow like His--
Sign of an inward peace
From trust in thee alone,
Unchanged by time or place.
And they who do their souls no wrong,
But keep at eve the faith of morn,
Shall daily hear the angel-song,
To-day the Prince of Peace is born.
--James Russell Lowell.
Drop thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of thy peace.
Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm!
--John Greenleaf Whittier.
As flows the river calm and deep.
In silence toward the sea,
So floweth ever, and ceaseth never,
The love of God to me.
What peace He bringeth to my heart,
Deep as the soundless sea;
How sweetly singeth the soul that clingeth,
My loving Lord, to thee.
He fails never.
If He cannot work by us He will work through us.
Let our souls be calm.
We should be ashamed to sit beneath those stars,
Impatient that we're nothing.
Get work, get work; be sure 'tis better
Than what you work to get.
--Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Calm Soul of all things, make it mine
To feel amid the city's jar,
That there abides a peace of thine
Man did not make and cannot mar.
The will to neither strive nor cry,
The power to feel with others give;
Calm, calm me more, nor let me die
Before I have begun to live.
--Matthew Arnold.
What secret trouble stirs thy heart?
Why all this fret and flurry?
Dost thou not know that what is best
In this too restless world is rest
From over-work and hurry?
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
We bless thee for thy peace, O God,
Deep as the boundless sea,
It falls like sunshine on the road,
Of those who trust in thee;
That peace which suffers and is strong,
Trusts where it cannot see:
Deems not the trial way too long,
But leaves the end with thee.
Be calm in arguing: for fierceness makes
Error a fault, and truth discourtesy.
Why should I feel another man's mistakes
More than his sicknesses or poverty?
In love I should; but anger is not love,
Nor wisdom, neither; therefore gently move.
--George Herbert.
Why fret thee, soul,
For things beyond thy small control?
But do thy part, and thou shalt see
Heaven will have charge of them and thee.
Sow then thy seed, and wait in peace
The Lord's increase.
What is the use of worrying
And flurrying and scurrying
And breaking up one's rest;
When all the world is teaching us
And praying and beseeching us
That quiet ways are best.
I feel within me
A peace above all earthly dignities
A still and quiet conscience.
--William Shakespeare.
The stormy blast is strong, but mightier still
The calm that binds the storm beneath its peaceful will.
--John Sterling.
As running water cleanseth bodies dropped therein
So heavenly truth doth cleanse the secret heart from sin.
--From the Sanskrit, tr. by Frederic Rowland Marvin.
From our ill-ordered hearts we oft are fain to roam,
As men go forth who find unquietness at home.
--Richard Chenevix Trench.
A mind from every evil thought set free
I count the noblest gift of Deity.
--Aeschylus, tr. by Frederic Rowland Marvin.
A stone makes not great rivers turbid grow;
When saints are vexed their shallowness they show.
--Saadi.
Yes, Lord, one great eternal yes
To all my Lord shall say;
To what I know, or yet shall know,
In all the untried way.
Good striving
Brings thriving.
Better a dog who works
Than a lion who shirks.
--From the Persian.