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(From “Sequences, Hymns, etc.”)
WHY march ye forth with hymn and chant | |
| Ye veteran soldiers jubilant, | |
| As though ye went to lay to rest | |
| Some warrior that had done his best? | |
| —Because we do but travel o’er | 5 |
| The road the Victor trod before; | |
| Himself knows well the way we go: | |
| The Son of Man is Lord also | |
| Of the grave-path. | |
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| Commit your loved one to the surge, | 10 |
| Without a wail, without a dirge? | |
| To the wild waves’ perpetual swell, | |
| To depths where monstrous creatures dwell? | |
| —Yes; for we lay him but to sleep | |
| Where those blest Feet have calmed the deep: | 15 |
| Little we reck its ebb and flow: | |
| The Son of Man is Lord also | |
| Of the Ocean. | |
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| Leave him with thousand corpses round, | |
| Thus buried in unhallowed ground, | 20 |
| Interred in that same scene of strife | |
| Where man and steed gasped out their life? | |
| —Yes: for our King and Captain boasts | |
| His own elect, His glorious hosts; | |
| His Victors, crowned o’er many a foe: | 25 |
| The Son of Man is Lord also | |
| Of the Battle. | |
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| Why, as across the dewy grass, | |
| Ye through the evening Church-yard pass, | |
| Why welcome in your bells a guest, | 30 |
| With chimings, not of woe, but rest? | |
| —Where’er their twilight warblings steal, | |
| We do but ring a Sabbath peal; | |
| And, till the glorious Sunday glow, | |
| The Son of Man is Lord also | 35 |
| Of the Sabbath. | |
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