Winter

The billowy shore is booming loud
The sky is black with storm and cloud,

The billowy shore is booming loud
The sky is black with storm and cloud,
The fields are bare, the air is chill,
And winter reigns from vale to hill.

The shortening day, the muffled sky,
The wild wind whistling bleakly by,
The naked fields, the leafless tree,
Speak, mortal man, speak all to thee.

They talk of sin, they talk of woe,
Of ruin wrought to all below;
They taunt the author of their doom,
And point him onward to the tomb.

The waves lift up their voice; the woods
Make solemn answer to the floods:
They bid us stand abased and awed,
And own an Omnipresent God.

Calm on the tempest’s hurrying wings
He walks His trembling earth, and flings,
Unmoved by elemental din,
His scourges o’er a world of sin.

Almighty!  be it mine to lie
Adoring as Thou passest by,
And hear Thee at the close proclaim
The gentler glories of Thy name!

The fire, the earthquake, and the wind
In these my God I would not find
But in the Voice still, small, and dim,
That speaks of Christ, and peace through Him.

Henry Francis Lyte