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270

August 18 SIN

“If ye do return unto the Lord with all your hearts, put away the strange gods and A shtaroth.”—1 Sam. vii. 3.

Incarnate Sin, thou dazzling Death,
I now were lying in thine arms,
Had not the Holy Spirit's Breath
Unveilèd Love's eternal charms:
But he who once with opened eyes
Hath looked upon that Blessèd Face,
Can find no more a Paradise
In any mortal resting-place.
Thy beauty passeth with the flesh
And fashions of the world that fade,
But at the Cross I live afresh
And in Christ's image am remade;
His Glory fills the skies and earth,
It is the light of every hour,
Transfigures all the home and hearth
And is the impulse of each power.
I cannot see thy graces more,
But as within some optic glass
I mark corruption at the core
And bloom that withers like the grass:
Thou art to me a verdant grave
That shows, beneath the Spirit's Breath,
And on bright flowers that flush and wave
The skull and bones of dusty death.
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