Classic and Contemporary Poetry
A LITTLE TE DEUM OF THE COMMONPLACE; A FRAGMENT, by WILLIAM ARTHUR DUNKERLEY First Line: With hearts responsive Last Line: We thank thee, lord! Alternate Author Name(s): Oxenham, John Variant Title(s): A Te Deum Of The Commonplace Subject(s): Holidays; Religion; Thanksgiving; Theology | ||||||||
With hearts responsive And enfranchised eyes, We thank Thee, Lord, -- For all things beautiful, and good, and true; For things that seemed not good yet turned to good; For all the sweet compulsions of Thy will That chased, and tried, and wrought us to Thy shape; For things unnumbered that we take of right, And value first when first they are withheld; For light and air; sweet sense of sound and smell; For ears to hear the heavenly harmonies; For eyes to see the unseen in the seen; For vision of The Worker in the work; For hearts to apprehend Thee everywhere; We thank Thee, Lord! For all the wonders of this wondrous world; -- The pure pearl splendours of the coming day, The breaking east, -- the rosy flush, -- the Dawn, -- For that bright gem in morning's coronal, That one lone star that gleams above the glow; For that high glory of the impartial sun, -- The golden noonings big with promised life; The matchless pageant of the evening skies, The wide-flung gates, -- the gleams of Paradise, -- Supremest visions of Thine artistry; The sweet, soft gloaming, and the friendly stars; The vesper stillness, and the creeping shades; The moon's pale majesty; the pulsing dome, Wherein we feel Thy great heart throbbing near; For sweet laborious days and restful nights; For work to do, and strength to do the work; We thank Thee, Lord! For those first tiny, prayerful-folded hands That pierce the winter's crust, and softly bring Life out of death, the endless mystery; -- For all the first sweet flushings of the Spring; The greening earth, the tender heavenly blue; The rich brown furrows gaping for the seed; For all Thy grace in bursting bud and leaf, -- The bridal sweetness of the orchard trees, Rose-tender in their coming fruitfulness; The fragrant snow-drifts flung upon the breeze; The grace and glory of the fruitless flowers, Ambrosial beauty their reward and ours; For hedgerows sweet with hawthorn and wild rose; For meadows spread with gold and gemmed with stars; For every tint of every tiniest flower; For every daisy smiling to the sun; For every bird that builds in joyous hope; For every lamb that frisks beside its dam; For every leaf that rustles in the wind; For spiring poplar, and for spreading oak; For queenly birch, and lofty swaying elm; For the great cedar's benedictory grace; For earth's ten thousand fragrant incenses, -- Sweet altar-gifts from leaf and fruit and flower; For every wondrous thing that greens and grows; For wide-spread cornlands, -- billowing golden seas; For rippling stream, and white-laced waterfall; For purpling mountains; lakes like silver shields; For white-piled clouds that float against the blue; For tender green of far-off upland slopes; For fringing forests and far-gleaming spires; For those white peaks, serene and grand and still; For that deep sea -- a shallow to Thy love; For round green hills, earth's full benignant breasts; For sun-chased shadows flitting o'er the plain; For gleam and gloom; for all life's counter-change; For hope that quickens under darkening skies; For all we see; for all that underlies, -- We thank Thee, Lord! For that sweet impulse of the coming Spring, For ripening Summer, and the harvesting; For all the rich Autumnal glories spread, -- The flaming pageant of the ripening woods; The fiery gorse, the heather-purpled hills; The rustling leaves that fly before the wind, And lie below the hedgerows whispering; For meadows silver-white with hoary dew; For sheer delight of tasting once again That first crisp breath of winter in the air; The pictured pane; the new white world without; The sparkling hedgerow's witchery of lace; The soft white flakes that fold the sleeping earth; The cold without, the cheerier warmth within; For red-heart roses in the winter snows; For all the flower and fruit of Christmas-tide; For all the glowing heart of Christmas-tide; We thank Thee, Lord! For all Thy ministries, -- For morning mist, and gently-falling dew; For summer rains, for winter ice and snow; For whispering wind and purifying storm; For the reft clouds that show the tender blue; For the forked flash and long tumultuous roll; For mighty rains that wash the dim earth clean; For the sweet promise of the seven-fold bow; For the soft sunshine, and the still calm night; For dimpled laughter of soft summer seas; For latticed splendour of the sea-borne moon; For gleaming sands, and granite-frontled cliffs; For flying spume, and waves that whip the skies; For rushing gale, and for the great glad calm; For Might so mighty, and for Love so true, With equal mind, We thank Thee, Lord! For maiden sweetness, and for strength of men; For love's pure madness and its high estate; For parentage -- man's nearest reach to Thee; For kinship, sonship, friendship, brotherhood Of men -- one Father -- one great family; For glimpses of the greater in the less; For touch of Thee in wife and child and friend; For noble self-denying motherhood; For saintly maiden lives of rare perfume; For little pattering feet and crooning songs; For children's laughter, and sweet wells of truth; For sweet child-faces and the sweet wise tongues; For childhood's faith that lifts us near to Thee And bows us with our own disparity; For childhood's sweet unconscious beauty sleep; For all that childhood teaches us of Thee; We thank Thee, Lord! For doubts that led us to the larger trust; For ills to conquer; for the love that fights; For that strong faith that vanquished axe and flame And gave us Freedom for our heritage; For clouds and darkness, and the still, small voice; For sorrows bearing fruit of nobler life; For those sore strokes that broke us at Thy feet; For peace in strife; for gain in seeming loss; For every loss that wrought the greater gain; For that sweet juice from bitterness outpressed; For all this sweet, strange paradox of life; We thank Thee, Lord! For friends above; for friends still left below; For the rare links invisible between; For Thine unsearchable greatness; for the veils Between us and the things we may not know; For those high times when hearts take wing and rise, And float secure above earth's mysteries; For that wide, open avenue of prayer, All radiant with Thy glorious promises; For sweet hearts tuned to noblest charity; For great hearts toiling in the outer dark; For friendly hands stretched out in time of need; For every gracious thought and word and deed; We thank Thee, Lord! For songbird answering song on topmost bough; For myriad twittering of the simpler folk; For that sweet lark that carols up the sky; For that low fluting on the summer night; For distant bells that tremble on the wind; For great round organ tones that rise and fall, Entwined with earthly voices tuned to heaven, And bear our hearts above the high-arched roof; For Thy great voice that dominates the whole, And shakes the heavens, and silences the earth; For hearts alive to earth's sweet minstrelsies; For souls attuned to heavenly harmonies; For apprehension, and for ears to hear, -- We thank Thee, Lord! For that supremest token of Thy Love, -- Thyself made manifest in human flesh; For that pure life beneath the Syrian sky -- The humble toil, the sweat, the bench, the saw, The nails well-driven, and the work well-done; For all its vast expansions; for the stress Of those three mighty years; For all He bore of our humanity; His hunger, thirst, His homelessness and want, His weariness that longed for well-earned rest; For labour's high ennoblement through Him, Who laboured with His hands for daily bread; For Lazarus, Mary, Martha, Magdalene, For Nazareth and Bethany; -- not least For that dark hour in lone Gethsemane; For that high cross upraised on Calvary; The broken seals, -- the rolled-back stone -- the Way, For ever opened through His life in death; For that brief glimpse vouchsafed within the veil; For all His gracious life; and for His Death, With low-bowed heads and hearts impassionate, We thank Thee, Lord! For all life's beauties, and their beauteous growth; For Nature's laws and Thy rich providence; For all Thy perfect processes of life; For the minute of perfection of Thy work, Seen and unseen, in each remotest part; For faith, and works, and gentle charity; For all that makes for quiet in the world; For all that lifts man from his common rut; For all that knits the silken bond of peace; For all that lifts the fringes of the night, And lights the darkened corners of the earth; For every broken gate and sundered bar; For every wide-flung window of the soul; For that Thou bearest all that Thou hast made; We thank Thee, Lord! For perfect childlike confidence in Thee; For childlike glimpses of the life to be; For trust akin to my child's trust in me; For hearts at rest through confidence in Thee; For hearts triumphant in perpetual hope; For hope victorious through past hopes fulfilled; For mightier hopes born of the things we know; For faith born of the things we may not know; For hope of powers increased ten thousand fold; For that last hope of likeness to Thyself, When hope shall end in glorious certainty; -- With quickened hearts That find Thee everywhere, We thank Thee, Lord! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MYSTIC BOUNCE by TERRANCE HAYES MATHEMATICS CONSIDERED AS A VICE by ANTHONY HECHT UNHOLY SONNET 11 by MARK JARMAN SHINE, PERISHING REPUBLIC by ROBINSON JEFFERS THE COMING OF THE PLAGUE by WELDON KEES A LITHUANIAN ELEGY by ROBERT KELLY A NEW EARTH by WILLIAM ARTHUR DUNKERLEY |
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