Project Canterbury

The Christian Year

by Blessed John Keble

transcribed by Miss Julia Beth Bruskin
AD 1999

THE CIRCUMCISION OF CHRIST.

In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands. Colossians ii. 11.

THE year begins with Thee,
And Thou beginn’st with woe,
To let the world of sinners see
That blood for sin must flow.

Thine infant cries, O Lord,
Thy tears upon the breast,
Are not enough—the legal sword
Must do its stern behest.

Like sacrificial wine
Pour’d on a victim’s head,
Are those few precious drops of thine,
Now first to offering led

They are the pledge and seal
Of Christ’s unswerving faith
Given to his Sire, our souls to heal,
Although it cost his death.

They to his church of old,
To each true Jewish heart,
In Gospel graces manifold
Communion blest impart.

Now of thy love we deem
As of an ocean vast,
Mounting in tides against the stream
Of ages gone and past.

Both theirs and ours Thou art,
As we and they are thine;
Kings, Prophets, Patriarchs—all have part
Along the sacred line.

By blood and water too
God’s mark is set on Thee,
That in Thee every faithful view
Both covenants might see.

O bond of union, dear
And strong as is thy grace!
Saints, parted by a thousand year,
May thus in heart embrace.

Is there a mourner true,
Who fallen on faithless days,
Sighs for the heart-consoling view
Of those, Heaven deign’d to praise?

In spirit may’st thou meet
With faithful Abraham here,
Whom soon in Eden thou shalt greet
A nursing Father dear.

Wouldst thou a Poet be?
And would thy dull heart fain
Borrow of Israel’s minstrelsy
One high enraptur’d strain?

Come here thy soul to tune—
Here set thy feeble chaunt,
Here, if at all beneath the moon,
Is holy David’s haunt.

Art thou a child of tears,
Cradled in care and woe?
And seems it hard, thy vernal years
Few vernal joys can shew?

And fall the sounds of mirth
Sad on thy lonely heart,
From all the hopes and charms of earth
Untimely call’d to part?

Look here, and hold thy peace:
The Giver of all good
Even from the womb takes no release
From suffering, tears, and blood.

If thou wouldst reap in love,
First sow in holy fear:
So life a winter’s morn may prove
To a bright endless year.

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