“Whither Shall I Fly From Thy Presence?”

Where shall I fly?  What dark untrodden path
Will lead a sinner from his Maker’s wrath?

Where shall I fly?  What dark untrodden path
Will lead a sinner from his Maker’s wrath?
Alas!  where’er I bend my outcast way,
His eye can search, His mighty hand hath sway.

Is there no island in the depths of space,
No distant world, where I may shun his chace?
Ah no!  Of all He is the spring and soul:
All feel His care, all own His high control.

But there is night: perhaps her murky womb
May wrap and hide me in its depths of gloom?
No: He that says, “Be light, and there is light,”
Can look Omniscience thro’ the dumnest night.

Give me the morning’s wings: I’ll fling me where
The desert waste ne’er claims His eye or care.
Vain hope!  If He were absent, conscience then
Would act the God, and scare me back to men.

Well then the ocean: She my head shall hide,
And quench his bolts in her o’ersheltering tide.
Fool!  the dark waves cleave wide at His command;
And, lo, He walks them as He walks the land.

What say the rocks?  Stern marble, ope thy breast,
And lock me in to monumental rest.
Vain, vain!  His voice the rocks have often heard;
Nay, worlds dissolve before His lightest word,

Be death then mine!  At least the grave, or hell,
Will yield some sullen nook where I may dwell.
No: the last trump shall burst the bars of death;
And God’s stern presence felt makes hell beneath.

Where then to flee?  How shun His arm, His eye?
Where find what earth, and heaven, and hell deny?
How pass beyond His infinite patrol,
Who fills, pervades, informs the mighty whole?

O where to flee?  There is but one retreat
‘Tis that which brings me contrite to His feet:
A change of heart, and not a change of place,
That flees from Justice to the arms of Grace.

The Saviour calls: “Come, trembler, to My breast:
“Beneath My cross thou may’st securely rest:
“Washed in My blood, thy guilt will all remove;
“And wrath eternal grow Eternal Love.”

Henry Francis Lyte