Poor Wanderers, Who Make Your Prayer

On The Epiphany: At The Vespers.

He hath called us not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles. As He saith also in Osee, I will call them My people which were not My people, and her beloved which was not beloved.—Rom. ix.

Words: Huc vos, ô miseri: surda relinquite, Charles Coffin (1676-1749), 1736

Source: Isaac Williams, Hymns Translated from the Parisian Breviary (London: J.G.F. & J. Rivington, 1839), pp. 84-85.

    Poor wanderers, who make your prayer
        To gods form'd by your hands, 
    That speak and hear not—see ye where 
        A glorious city stands, 
And opes to you her walls and golden rest; 
Those glorious walls within God is Himself the guest.

    E'en now your chiefs they lead the way,
        The volume is displayed, 
    From prophecy breaks forth the ray:— 
        They sat beneath death's shade, 
But wake, and see afar a wondrous light, 
Which from those walls breaks forth upon the rear of night.

    Long have they been asunder thrown,
        Like sunshine and the shade; 
    But now—the wall is broke and gone, 
        And they are equal made; 
Oh Thou, whose counsels in dark waters dwell, 
And footsteps are in deeps by man untraceable!

    Judah, who on her mountain throne
        Had built on high her nest, 
    Hath from her lofty seat come down 
        To welcome her new Guest. 
And see the Alien's glory late made wise, 
To live by her decay, from her abasement rise. 

    Drooping and dropping as she hung 
        Over her stock o'erthrown, 
    She sees new shoots around her sprung, 
        And branches not her own! 
Ah me, take heed, thou faith-engrafted shoot, 
Lest thou be sever'd from the Life-supporting Root!

    Glory to Thee, the Living Three,
        The Everlasting Son, 
    And Thee, who gavest us to be 
        Made in that Body one, 
And Spirit, spreading life through every limb, 
Oh! graft again the lost—the grafted keep in Him.

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