Alfred H. Miles, ed. The Sacred Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.
By Mediæval Hymns and Sequences. Hora Novissima. IV. “For thee, O dear dear Country!”John Mason Neale, trans. (1818–1866)
(Selected Passages)
F
Mine eyes their vigils keep;
For very love, beholding
Thy happy name, they weep:
The mention of thy glory
Is unction to the breast,
And medicine in sickness,
And love, and life, and rest.
O come, O onely Mansion!
O Paradise of Joy!
Where tears are ever banished,
And smiles have no alloy;
Beside thy living waters
All plants are, great and small,
The cedar of the forest,
The hyssop of the wall:
With jaspers glow thy bulwarks;
Thy streets with emeralds blaze;
The sardius and the topaz
Unite in thee their rays:
Thine ageless walls are bonded
With amethyst unpriced:
Thy Saints build up its fabric,
And the corner-stone is Christ.
The Cross is all thy splendour,
The Crucified thy praise:
His laud and benediction
Thy ransomed people raise:
Jesus, the Gem of Beauty,
True God and Man, they sing:
The never-failing Garden,
The ever-golden Ring:
The Door, the Pledge, the Husband,
The Guardian of His Court:
The Day-star of Salvation,
The Porter and the Port.
Thou hast no shore, fair ocean!
Thou hast no time, bright day!
Dear fountain of refreshment
To pilgrims far away!
Upon the Rock of Ages
They raise thy holy tower:
Thine is the victor’s laurel,
And thine the golden dower:
Thou feel’st in mystic rapture
O Bride that know’st no guile,
The Prince’s sweetest kisses,
The Prince’s loveliest smile:
Unfading lilies, bracelets
Of living pearl thine own:
The Lamb is ever near thee,
The Bridegroom thine alone:
The Crown is He to guerdon,
The Buckler to protect,
And He Himself the Mansion,
And He the Architect.
Thanksgiving for thy lot:
The only joy thou seekest,
The Life where Death is not:
And all thine endless leisure
In sweetest accents sings,
The ill that was thy merit,—
The wealth that is thy King’s!
With milk and honey blest,
Beneath thy contemplation
Sink heart and voice oppressed:
I know not, O I know not,
What social joys are there!
What radiancy of glory,
What light beyond compare!
My spirit fails and faints,
And vainly would it image
The assembly of the Saints.
Conjubilant with song,
And bright with many an angel,
And all the martyr throng:
The Prince is ever in them;
The daylight is serene:
The pastures of the Blessèd
Are decked in glorious sheen.
And there, from care released,
The song of them that triumph,
The shout of them that feast;
And they who, with their Leader,
Have conquered in the fight,
For ever and for ever
Are clad in robes of white!
Of that eternal hymn!
O sacred, sweet refection,
And peace of Seraphim!
O thirst, for ever ardent,
Yet evermore content!
O true, peculiar vision
Of God cunctipotent!
Ye know the many mansions
For many a glorious name,
And divers retributions
That divers merits claim:
For midst the constellations
That deck our earthly sky,
This star than that is brighter,—
And so it is on high.
The glory of the Elect!
O dear and future vision
That eager hearts expect:
Even now by faith I see thee:
Even here thy walls discern:
To thee my thoughts are kindled,
And strive and pant and yearn:
Jerusalem the onely,
That look’st from heaven below,
In thee is all my glory;
In me is all my woe!
And though my body may not,
My spirit seeks thee fain,
Till flesh and earth return me
To earth and flesh again.
O none can tell thy bulwarks,
How gloriously they rise:
O none can tell thy capitals
Of beautiful device:
Thy loveliness oppresses
All human thought and heart:
And none, O peace, O Syon,
Can sing thee as thou art.
New mansion of new people,
Whom God’s own love and light
Promote, increase, make holy,
Identify, unite.
Thou City of the Angels!
Thou City of the Lord!
Whose everlasting music
Is the glorious decachord!
And there the band of Prophets
United praise ascribes,
And there the twelvefold chorus
Of Israel’s ransomed tribes:
The lily-beds of virgins,
The roses’ martyr-glow,
The cohort of the Fathers
Who kept the faith below.
And there the Sole-Begotten
Is Lord in regal state;
He, Judah’s mystic Lion,
He, Lamb Immaculate.
O fields that know no sorrow!
O state that fears no strife!
O princely bow’rs! O land of flow’rs!
O realm and home of Life!