The poetical works of John and Charles Wesley

While sad my heart, and blasted mourns,
How cheering, Lord, are Thy returns,
How sweet the life, the joys they bring!
Grief in Thy presence melts away.
Refresh'd I hail the gladsome day,
As flowers salute the rising spring.

Who would have thought my wither'd heart
Again should feel Thy sovereign art,
A kindly warmth again should know?
Late like the flower, whose drooping head
Sinks down, and seeks its native bed
To see the mother-root below.

These are Thy wonders, Lord of power,
Killing and quickening! One short hour
Lifts up to heaven, and sinks to hell:
Thy will supreme disposes all;
We prove Thy justice in our fall,
Thy mercy in our rise we feel.

O that my latest change were o'er!
O were I placed where sin no more,
With its attendant grief, could come!
Stranger to change, I then should rise
Amidst the plants of paradise,
And flourish in eternal bloom.

Many a spring since here I grew,
I seem'd my verdure to renew,
And higher still to rise and higher:
Water'd by tears, and fann'd by sighs,
I pour'd my fragrance through the skies,
And heavenward ever seem'd to' aspire.

But while I grow, as heaven were mine,
Thine anger comes, and I decline;
Faded my bloom, my glory lost:
Who can the deadly cold sustain,
Or stand beneath the chilling pain
When blasted by Thine anger's frost?

And now in age I bud again,
Once more I feel the vernal rain;
Though dead so oft, I live and write:
Sure I but dream! It cannot be
That I, my God, that I am he
On whom Thy tempests fell all night!

These are Thy wonders, Lord of love,
Thy mercy thus delights to prove
We are but flowers that bloom and die!
Soon as this saving truth we see,
Within Thy garden placed by Thee,
Time we survive, and death defy.

University of Virginia Library

THE FLOWER.

From the same.