  LORD Jesus, Thou didst come to us, to man, From Godhead’s open golden Halls, From Godhead’s hidden Throne Of glory, no imagination can Achieve, and it must glow alone, Behind a cloud that falls Over the Triune Perfectness its voice Of thunder, making Cherubim rejoice, And Seraphim as doves in rapture moan. Yet Thou didst come to us a wailing child, Homeless, tied up in swaddling-clothes, To live in poverty And by the road: then, with detractions piled, And infamies of misery From scourge and thorns and blows, To die a felon fastened into wood By nails that in their jeering harshness could Clamp vermin of the forests to a tree. And Thou dost come to us from Heaven each day, Obeying words that call Thee down On mortal lips; and Thou, Jesus, dost suffer mortal power to slay Its God in sacrifice: dost bow Thy bright Supremacy to lose its Crown, Closed in a prison, yet through Godhead free To every insult, gibe and contumely— Come from Forever to be with us Now. So Thou dost come to us. But when at last Thou callest us to come to Thee, We only have to die, Only from weary bones our flesh to cast, Only to give a bitter cry; Yea, but a little while to see Our beauty falling from us, in its fall Destined to lose its suasions that enthral, Destined to be as any gem put by. We but fulfil our stricken Nature’s law To fail and to consume and end; While Thou dost come and break, Coming to us, Thy Nature with a flaw Of death and for our mortal sake Thou dost Thy awful wholeness rend. Oh, let me run to Thee, as runs a wind, That leaves the withered trees, it moved, behind, And triumphs forward, careless of its wake! |
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