hou holy Christ, my soul's own Liege—My Hiding-Place, my Mercy-Seat—
Who once for all, in public view,
In thorn and nail and rattling breath,
By lowering sky and sundered tomb,
Was Victor crowned in hard-fought fight;
Within my darkness shine Thy light!
To fallen passions give no room;
The foe within me put to death;
And grant that I to Thee may hew,
As in the battle's fiercest heat,
So also in the long cold siege.
The pain that bites with sharpest fang
Thou knowest how to soothe, to heal;
Teach me as well the slow dull ache
To bear, and find Thee by me still.
Loosed from entangling sins each day,
Thus shall I know full joy indeed.
Unto that end, Lord Jesus, feed
My trusting soul, my doubting clay;
According to Thy word and will
Let me of Thy life's blood partake,
And through Thy body—no less real—
Absorb the peace the angels sang.
1 comment:
I've been writing this hymn in my head all day. I had the approximate rhyme scheme & the liege/siege fang/ache lines before the sermon at 9 a.m. worship. Didn't get a chance to pull my ideas together until getting home from work at about 11 p.m. I'm ambivalent about whether it's 2 (12-line) stanzas or 4 (6-line) ones. The rhyme scheme cycles through 12 lines, as does the sentence structure of the first half of the hymn. But I fear that a tune long enough to account for a 12-line stanza of this length would be, well, uninspired.
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