Thou Shepherd of Israel, and mine,
The joy and desire of my heart,
For closer communion I pine,
I long to reside where thou art:
The pasture I languish to find
There all, who their Shepherd obey.
Are fed, on thy bosom reclined,
And screened from the heat of the day.
Ah! show me that happiest place,
The place of thy people’s abode,
Where saints in an ecstasy gaze,
And hang on a crucified God;
Thy love for a sinner declare,
Thy passion and death on the tree;
My spirit to Calvary bear,
To suffer and triumph with thee.
‘Tis there, with the lambs of thy flock,
There only, I covet to rest,
To lie at the foot of the rock,
Or rise to be hid in thy breast;
‘Tis there I would always abide,
And never a moment depart,
Concealed in the cleft of thy side,
Eternally held in thy heart.
Charles Wesley
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Pam 01.30.12 at 2:41 am
This work is by Petra White, a talented young poet already with two volumes published:
Ricketts Point
A slim girl playing by herself in the shallows,
like someone who’s never been to the beach before,
and suddenly marvels at how the world
tips open to broad deep space, not fearsome.
Seawater cool as milk intimately swirling her,
Sand hospitably absorbing and releasing her feet,
her mounting dance of being, luminously alone
on the sea’s hearth, its hissing welcome mat.
Two bearded men, perhaps her father and uncle,
identical as Kafka’s lodgers, further out in the waves.
A third man out there with them hurls a ball;
they miss and laugh repeatedly, rolling like seals
under the waves and up again, under and over
their joy that won’t stay under, and mirrors and magnifies
the separate joy of the girl, her not-to-be-tested trust.
Smiling at strangers perched on their towels
who can’t help watching her, and smile back as if her world,
scribbled and wiped from soaked and pre-soaked shore
and flung from her hands in effortless wave-sprays,
was large or real enough to include them.
Anon 01.30.12 at 9:48 am
Thanks. This got into Hymns and Psalms on appeal and I fear will be lost to future generations as it is to many of the present!
Tony Buglass 01.31.12 at 12:06 am
It isn’t in STF.