“Bring all our wandering fancies home,
   For Thou hast every spell,
And ’mid the heathen where they roam,
   Thou knowest, Lord, too well.

“Thou know’st our service sad and hard,
   Thou know’st us fond and frail;
Win us to be loved and spared
   When all the world shall fail.

“So when at last our weary days
   Are well-nigh wasted here,
And we can trace Thy wondrous ways
   In distance calm and clear,

“When in Thy love and Israel’s sin
   We read our story true,
We may not, all too late, begin
   To wish our hopes were new.

“Long loved, long tried, long spared as they,
   Unlike in this alone,
That, by Thy grace, our hearts shall stay
   For evermore Thine own.”

NINETEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY

Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonished, and rose up in haste, and spake, and said unto his counsellors, Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire?  They answered and said unto the king, True, O king.  He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.  Daniel iii. 24, 25.

When Persecution’s torrent blaze
   Wraps the unshrinking Martyr’s head;
When fade all earthly flowers and bays,
   When summer friends are gone and fled,
Is he alone in that dark hour
Who owns the Lord of love and power?

Or waves there not around his brow
   A wand no human arm may wield,
Fraught with a spell no angels know,
   His steps to guide, his soul to shield? 
Thou, Saviour, art his Charmed Bower,
His Magic Ring, his Rock, his Tower.

And when the wicked ones behold
   Thy favourites walking in Thy light,
Just as, in fancy triumph bold,
   They deemed them lost in deadly night,
Amazed they cry, “What spell is this,
Which turns their sufferings all to bliss?

“How are they free whom we had bound? 
   Upright, whom in the gulf we cast? 
What wondrous helper have they found
   To screen them from the scorching blast? 
Three were they—­who hath made them four? 
And sure a form divine he wore,

“E’en like the Son of God.”  So cried
   The Tyrant, when in one fierce flame
The Martyrs lived, the murderers died: 
   Yet knew he not what angel came
To make the rushing fire-flood seem
Like summer breeze by woodland stream.

He knew not, but there are who know: 
   The Matron, who alone hath stood,
When not a prop seemed left below,
   The first lorn hour of widowhood,
Yet cheered and cheering all, the while,
With sad but unaffected smile; —

The Father, who his vigil keeps
   By the sad couch whence hope hath flown,
Watching the eye where reason sleeps,
   Yet in his heart can mercy own,
Still sweetly yielding to the rod,
Still loving man, still thanking god; —