For songbird answering song on topmost bough; For myriad twitterings of the simpler folk; For that sweet lark that carols up the sky; For that low fluting on the summer night; For distant bells that tremble on the wind; For great round organ tones that rise and fall, Entwined with earthly voices tuned to heaven, And bear our hearts above the high-arched roof; For Thy great voice that dominates the whole, And shakes the heavens, and silences the earth; For hearts alive to earth's sweet minstrelsies; For souls attuned to heavenly harmonies; For apprehension, and for ears to hear,-- _We thank Thee, Lord_! For that supremest token of Thy Love,-- Thyself made manifest in human flesh; For that pure life beneath the Syrian sky-- The humble toil, the sweat, the bench, the saw, The nails well-driven, and the work well-done; For all its vast expansions; for the stress Of those three mighty years; For all He bore of our humanity; His hunger, thirst, His homelessness and want, His weariness that longed for well-earned rest; For labour's high ennoblement through Him, Who laboured with His hands for daily bread; For Lazarus, Mary, Martha, Magdalene, For Nazareth and Bethany;--not least For that dark hour in lone Gethsemane; For that high cross upraised on Calvary; The broken seals,--the rolled-back stone--The Way, For ever opened through His life in death; For that brief glimpse vouchsafed within the vail; For all His gracious life; and for His Death, With low-bowed heads and hearts impassionate, _We thank Thee, Lord_! For all life's beauties, and their beauteous growth; For Nature's laws and Thy rich providence; For all Thy perfect processes of life; For the minute perfection of Thy work, Seen and unseen, in each remotest part; For faith, and works, and gentle charity; For all that makes for quiet in the world; For all that lifts man from his common rut; For all that knits the silken bond of peace; For all that lifts the fringes of the night, And lights the darkened corners of the earth; For every broken gate and sundered bar; For every wide-flung window of the soul; For that Thou bearest all that Thou hast made; _We thank Thee, Lord_! For perfect childlike confidence in Thee; For childlike glimpses of the life to be; For trust akin to my child's trust in me; For hearts at rest through confidence in Thee; For hearts triumphant in perpetual hope; For hope victorious through past hopes fulfilled; For mightier hopes born of the things we know; For faith born of the things we may not know; For hope of powers increased ten thousand fold; For that last hope of likeness to Thyself, When hope shall end in glorious certainty; --_With quickened hearts That find Thee everywhere, We thank Thee, Lord_! POLICEMAN X IF HE WOULD BUT DARE