Henry Alford Poems

Children of your Father's love,
Children of your God above,
See the Cross, whereon portrayed
All your duties are displayed.
...

If, gentle stream, by promised sacrifice
Of kid or yearling, or by scattered flowers
Of votive roses culled from thy thick bowers,
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I named thee once the silver thread,
When in the burning summer day
I stept across thy stony bed
Upon my homeward way.
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To--morrow--'tis an idle sound,
Tell me of no such dreary thing;
A new land whither I am bound
After strange wandering.
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As one who, placed in dreaded pulpit high
In Westminster or Paul's, ere sermon time
Scanning the crowd, beholds right opposite
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Thou falledst--but thou art not fled--
Thy spirit is but scattered,
And of thy mighty soul a part
Liveth in each true British heart;
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The lovely form of God's own Church
It riseth in all lands,
On mountain sides, in wooded vales,
And by the desert sands.
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Had I the wondrous magic to invest
Ideal forms in colour, I would paint
Thee, winter, first, by an ideal saint
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Lo, where they play, the fiery squadrons bright,
Along the spangled azure of the night;
Waving aloft their ensigns, where the while
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Beloved, to whose wedded hand I trust
This treasure of sweet song, it is but meet
That thou shouldst know its value; that the gift
...