New Year
Word of endless oration,
Christ, I to thy call appear:
On my knees in meek prostration
To begin a better year.
Spirits in eternal waiting,
Special ministers of pray’r,
Which our welcome antedating,
Shall the benediction bear.
Which, the type of vows completed,
Shall the wreathed garland send,
While the new blessings are intreated,
And communicants attend.
Emblem of the hopes beginning,
Who the budding rods shall bind,
Way from guiltless nature’s winning,
In good-will to human kind.
Ye that dwell with cherub-turtles
Mated in the upmost light,
Or parade amongst the myrtles,
On your steeds of speckl’d white.
Ye that sally from the portal
Of yon everlasting how’rs,
Sounding symphonies immortal,
Years, and months, and days, and hours.
But nor myrtles, nor the breathing
Or the never-dying grove,
Nor the chaplets sweetly wreathing,
And by hands angelic wove;
Not the Musick or the mazes
Of those spirits aptly tim’d,
Can avail like pray’r and praises
By the Lamb himself sublim’d.
Take ye therefore what ye give him,
Of his fulness grace for grace,
Strive to think him, speak him, live him,
Till you find him face to face.
Sing like David, or like Hannah,
As the spirit first began,
To the God of heights hosanna!
Peace and charity to man.
Christ his blessing universal
On th’arch-patriarch’s seed bestow,
Which attend to my rehearsal
Of the melodius pray’r
below.
Christopher Smart
