O who like thee, so calm, so bright,
Lord Jesus Christ, thou Light of light;
O who like thee did ever go
So patient through a world of woe?
O who like thee so humbly bore
The scorn, the scoffs of men, before;
So meek, so lowly, yet so high,
So glorious in humility?
Through all thy lifelong weary years,
A Man of sorrows and of tears,
The cross, where all our sins were laid,
Upon thy bending shoulders weighed;
And death, that sets the prisoner free,
Was pang and scoff and scorn to thee;
Yet love through all thy torture glowed,
And mercy with thy life-blood flowed.
O wondrous Lord, our souls would be
Still more and more conformed to thee!
Would lose the pride, the taint of sin,
That burns these fevered veins within?
And learn of thee, the lowly One,
And, like thee, all our journey run,
Above the world, and all its mirth,
Yet weeping still with weeping earth.
Be with us as we onward go;
Illumine all our way of woe;
And grant us ever on the road
To trace the footsteps of our God;
That when thou shalt appear, arrayed
In light, to judge the quick and dead,
We may to life immortal soar
Through thee, who livest evermore.
--Arthur Cleveland Coxe.