Watching Unto God in the Night Season (3)
Night! how I love thy silent shades,
My spirits they compose;
The bliss of heaven my soul pervades,
In spite of all my woes.
While sleep instils her poppy dews
In every slumbering eye,
I watch to meditate and muse,
In blest tranquillity.
And when I feel a God immense
Familiarly impart,
With every proof he can dispense,
His favour to my heart;
My native meanness I lament,
Though most divinely filled
With all the ineffable content
That Deity can yield.
His purpose and his course he keeps;
Treads all my reasonings down;
Commands me out of nature’s deeps,
And hides me in his own.
When in the dust, its proper place,
Our pride of heart we lay;
’Tis then a deluge of his grace
Bears all our sins away.
Thou whom I serve, and whose I am,
Whose influence from on high
Refines, and still refines my flame,
And makes my fetters fly;
How wretched is the creature’s state
Who thwarts thy gracious power;
Crushed under sin’s enormous weight,
Increasing every hour!
The night, when passed entire with thee,
How luminous and clear!
Then sleep has no delights for me,
Lest thou should’st disappear.
My Saviour! occupy me still
In this secure recess;
Let reason slumber if she will,
My joy shall not be less.
Let reason slumber out the night;
But if thou deign to make
My soul the abode of truth and light,
Ah, keep my heart awake!
