Give me thy music, O most musical One,
The rhythm that rolls from yonder cycling sun;
Yea more, as heart and soul of all that’s good,
Thy nature gave in vaster plenitude;
Nor time will ever be when thy glad stars
Will cease to sing as one in rhythmic bars;
Nor conscious sons of God go shouting joy;
Nor woodland birds of song their loved employ.
It’s in the very heart of things;
It’s in our bounds and sweeps and swings;
It’s in the tree and rose that springs—
All Nature sings—— and—— sings.
The heart of man, his coursing blood through veins;
The very breath of life, his thoughts and reins;
His dreams, devotions, deeds, his all, O soul,
Or great or small beneath divine control.
The gracious seasons roll in mighty numbers;
The snow, the sleet but falls, that He who slumbers
Not may again awake the earth to life
And stay, for man and all, the winter’s strife.
The raging storm, the great earthquake and war
Are music bound, if we but see afar;
From heart of heav’n to heart of hell—ah yes;
The prince of darkness is beset, not less—
’Tis bars and feet, far-reaching leaps and falls,
Through light not seen in His momentous calls.
Consider Job—upright but proud—at last,
By grinding fate, by every woe held fast,
He turned to highest hills and King of all;
And never more asked he, “_why such a fall?_”
It was the rhythm of God through stops of sin;
’Twas His own anthems deep, without, within.
Our Pilgrim fathers, banished by the fates,
Brought out of many ills the United States;
And through each crisis great of all known time,
’Tis God in love; ’tis music full sublime.
At last the Lamb and Lion in song shall join;
The Child and Wolf eternal riches coin;
The Night shall sing to Day, and Day to Him,
Who receives the plaudits of the seraphim.