John Mason Neale (1818–1866)

(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

The road the Victor trod before;

Himself knows well the way we go:

The Son of Man is Lord also

Of the grave-path.

Commit your loved one to the surge,

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:

Little we reck its ebb and flow:

The Son of Man is Lord also

Of the Ocean.

Leave him with thousand corpses round,

Thus buried in unhallowed ground,

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:

The Son of Man is Lord also

Of the Battle.

Why, as across the dewy grass,

Ye through the evening Church-yard pass,

Why welcome in your bells a guest,

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

Of the Sabbath.