Today’s hymn is another one William Cowper (1731-1800) that you won’t find in your hymnal. In fact, I don’t have a tune for it. I found it in The Churchman’s Treasury of Song from 1907. It’s a portion of his larger work The Task, published in 1794. In The Churchman’s Treasury of Song, it’s given as a devotional hymn for the third week after Easter.
The Poetry Foundation described Cowper as “the foremost poet of the generation between Alexander Pope and William Wordsworth. For several decades, he had probably the largest readership of any English poet. From 1782, when his first major volume appeared, to 1837, the year in which Robert Southey completed the monumental Life and Works of Cowper, more than 100 editions of his poems were published in Britain and almost 50 in America.”
This hymn focuses on mortality and ultimate truth.
“I, I am he who comforts you;
who are you that you are afraid of dman who dies,
of the son of man who is made like grass,
and have forgotten the Lord, your Maker,
who stretched out the heavens
and glaid the foundations of the earth . . .” (Isaiah 51:12-13 ESV)
All flesh is grass, and all its glory fades
Like the fair flower dishevell’d in the wind;
Riches have wings, and grandeur is a dream.
The man we celebrate must find a tomb,
And we that worship him ignoble graves.
Nothing is proof against the general curse
Of vanity, that seizes all below.
The only amaranthine flower on earth
Is virtue; the only lasting treasure, truth.
But what is truth? ‘Twas Pilate’s question put
To Truth itself, that deign’d him no reply.
And wherefore? will not God impart his light
To them that ask it?—Freely—’tis his joy,
His glory, and his nature to impart.
But to the proud, uncandid, insincere,
Or negligent inquirer, not a spark.
What’s that which brings contempt upon a book,
And him who writes it, though the style be neat,
The method clear, and argument exact?
That makes a minister in holy things
The joy of many and the dread of more,
His name a theme for praise and for reproach?—
That, while it gives us worth in God’s account,
Depreciates and undoes us in our own?
What pearl is it that rich men cannot buy,
That learning is too proud to gather up;
But which the poor, and the despised of all,
Seek and obtain, and often find unsought?
Tell me—and I will tell thee what is truth.
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