O GOD, from Thee we would not stray: Reveal to us Thyself, the Way! Recall us, claim us when we roam! Thou art our country and our home. With Thee, in Thee alone is rest: Thou art our East, and Thou our West. Our little lives of Thine are part: No boundaries bar us from Thy heart. Through starless night, through mist and gale, Thou art the shore toward which we sail; We bid farewell to friends most kind, But never leave Thy love behind. It perfumes every foreign flower; It brightens every homesick hour; It greets us in the stranger's eye, With the heart's question and reply. For none are alien, none are strange, Met in the Love that cannot change; We all are brethren in Thy Son -- The Father and the children one. O Christ, Thou art the atmosphere Of heaven, breathed into mortals here! Sharing Thy holy sacrifice We live, and sin within us dies. Be in us! Let Thy Spirit strong Inspire towards good, and win from wrong; Save us from base and sinful strife, And draw us closer, life to life! We are but orphans, Lord, till we Thine in each other's face can see; O shelter us, below, above, In Thy great heights and depths of Love! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AN ODE TO THE RAIN by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE ECHOES: 4. INVICTUS by WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY THE SWORD by ABU BAKR OF MARRAKESH THREE SONNETS WRITTEN IN MID-CHANNEL: 2 by ALFRED AUSTIN A MORNING HYMN by JOSEPH BEAUMONT |