Words
“Lift up your hearts!” We lift them, Lord, to Thee;
Here at Thy feet none other may we see;
“Lift up your hearts!” E’en so, with one accord,
We lift them up, we lift them to the Lord.
Above the level of the former years,
The mire of sin, the weight of guilty fears,
The mist of doubt, the blight of love’s decay,
O Lord of Light, lift all our hearts today!
Above the swamps of subterfuge and shame,
The deeds, the thoughts, that honor may not name,
The halting tongue that dares not tell the whole,
O Lord of Truth, lift every Christian soul!
Above the storms that vex this lower state,
Pride, jealousy, and envy, rage, and hate,
And cold mistrust that holds e’en friends apart,
O Lord of Love, lift every brother’s heart!
Lift every gift that Thou Thyself hast given;
Low lies the best till lifted up to heaven;
Low lie the bounding heart, the teeming brain,
Till, sent from God, they mount to God again.
Then, as the trumpet call, in after years,
“Lift up your hearts!” rings pealing in our ears,
Still shall those hearts respond, with full accord
“We lift them up, we lift them to the Lord!”
Read more about this topic: Lift Up Your Hearts!
Famous quotes containing the word words:
“It is no small mischief to a boy, that many of the best years of his life should be devoted to the learning of what can never be of any real use to any human being. His mind is necessarily rendered frivolous and superficial by the long habit of attaching importance to words instead of things; to sound instead of sense.”
—William Cobbett (1762–1835)
“I am filling the room
with the words from my pen.
Words leak out of it like a miscarriage.
I am zinging words out into the air
and they come back like squash balls.
Yet there is silence.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“This unlettered man’s speaking and writing are standard English. Some words and phrases deemed vulgarisms and Americanisms before, he has made standard American; such as “It will pay.” It suggests that the one great rule of composition—and if I were a professor of rhetoric I should insist on this—is, to speak the truth. This first, this second, this third; pebbles in your mouth or not. This demands earnestness and manhood chiefly.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)