Jerusalem, Jerusalem!

Jerusalem, Jerusalem!  enthroned once on high,
Thou favored home of God on earth, thou heaven below the sky,

Jerusalem, Jerusalem!  enthroned once on high,
Thou favored home of God on earth, thou heaven below the sky,
Now brought to bondage with thy sons, a curse and grief to see,
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, our tears shall flow for thee.

O, hadst thou known thy day of grace, and flocked beneath the wing
Of him who called thee lovingly, thine own anointed King,
Then had the tribes of all the world gone up thy pomp to see,
And glory dwelt within thy gates, and all thy sons been free.

‘And who art thou that mournest me?’ replied the ruin gray,
‘And fear’st not rather that thyself may prove a castaway?
I am a dried and abject branch, my place is given to thee;
But woe to every barren graft of thy wild olivetree.

‘Our day of grace is sunk in night, our time of mercy spent,
For heavy was my children’s crime, and strange their punishment;
Yet gaze not idly on our fall, but, sinner, warned be,
Who spared not his chosen seed may send his wrath on thee.

‘Our day of grace is sunk in night, thy noon is in its prime;
O, turn and seek thy Saviour’s face in this accepted time.

So, Gentile, may Jerusalem a lesson prove to thee,
And in the new Jerusalem thy home for ever be.’

Reginald Heber