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A Little Te Deum Of The Commonplace. A Fragment

by William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham)

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 wildrose;

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 out-pressed;

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 vails

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 twitterings 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 vail;

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 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!