|There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not seen.| -- Job xxviii.7.
T. P.
tr., Emma Frances Bevan, 1899
One place have I in heaven above
The glory of His throne --
On this dark earth, whence He is gone,
I have one place alone,
And if His rest in Heaven I know,
I joy to find His path below,
We meet to own that place alone
Around the broken bread --
The dead whose life is hid with Christ
Remembering Jesus dead.
For us has set the earthly light,
Above, the glory; here, the night.
And dear as is His place on high,
His footsteps are below,
Where He has gone through scorn and wrong,
There also would I go.
Lord, where Thou diedst I would die,
For where Thou livest, there am I.
One lonely path across the waste,
Thy lowly path of shame;
I would adore Thy wondrous grace
That I should tread the same.
The Stranger and the Alien, Thou --
And I the stranger, alien, now.
Thy Cross a mighty barrier stands
Between the world and me --
Not yielding with reluctant hands,
But glorying to be free,
From that which now is dung and dross,
Beside Thy Glory, and Thy Cross.
I see Thee there amidst the light,
The Father's blessed Son;
I know that I in Thee am there,
That light and love mine own.
What has this barren world to give,
If there in Thy deep joy I live?
Sent hither from that glorious Home,
As Thou wert sent before,
Of that great love from whence I come
To witness evermore,
For this would I count all things loss,
Thy joy, Thy glory, and Thy Cross.