Poetic Vagueness

Next Sunday's service in Hull, conducted by Stephen Carlile, has this hymn, which in its necessarily vague language gives me a sense of transcendence and one to which I can sing.

The morning hangs a signal
Upon the mountain crest,
While all the sleeping valleys
In silent darkness rest.
From peak to peak it flashes,
It laughs along the sky,
Till glory of the sunlight
On all the land doth lie.



Above the generations
The lonely prophets rise,
While truth flings dawn and day-star
Within their glowing eyes;
And other eyes, beholding,
As kindled from that light,
And dawn becomes the morning,
The darkness put to flight.

The soul hath lifted moments,
Above the drift of days,
With life's great meaning breaking
In sunrise on our ways.
Behold the radiant token
Of faith above all fear;
Night shall be lost in splendour
And morning shall appear!

William Channing Gannett
Thornbury 7 6. 7 6. D.

[By the way these spirographs and the sphere in the previous post come from a drawing program just downloaded]