If I Him but have,
If he be but mine--
If my heart, hence to the grave,
Ne'er forgets his love divine--
Know I naught of sadness,
Feel I naught but worship, love, and gladness.
If I Him but have,
Glad with all I part;
Follow on my pilgrim staff,
My Lord, only, with true heart;
Leave them, nothing saying,
On broad, bright, and crowded highways straying.
If I Him but have,
Glad I fall asleep;
Aye the flood that his heart gave
Strength within my heart shall keep;
And with soft compelling
Make it tender, through and through it swelling.
If I Him but have,
Mine the world I hail!
Glad as cherub smiling, grave,
Holding back the Virgin's veil.
Sunk and lost in seeing,
Earthly cares have died from all my being.
Where I have but Him
Is my Fatherland,
And all gifts and graces come
Heritage into my hand;
Brothers long deplored
I in his disciples find restored.
--George Macdonald.
Quiet from God! How beautiful to keep
This treasure the All-merciful hath given;
To feel, when we awake or when we sleep,
Its incense round us like a breath from heaven.
To sojourn in the world, and yet apart;
To dwell with God, and still with man to feel;
To bear about forever in the heart
The gladness which his spirit doth reveal.
--Sarah J. Williams.