Divine Hymns, or Spiritual Songs: for the Use of Religious Assemblies and Private Christians (7th Ed. Rev.) 24. My days, my weeks, my months, my years

Divine Hymns, or Spiritual Songs‎#24

Text:

24. On the Swiftness of Time

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1 My days, my weeks, my months, my years
Fly rapid like the whirling spheres,
Around the steady pole:
Time like a tide its motion keeps,
Till I shall launch those boundless deeps,
Where endless ages roll.

2 The grave is near the cradle seen;
How swift the moments pass between
And whisper as thy fly,
Unthinking man remember this,
Thou, midst thy sublunary bliss,
Must groan, and gulp and die.

3 My soul attend the solemn call;
thine earthly tent must quickly fall,
And thou must take thy flight
Beyond the vast extensive blue,
To love and sing as angels do,
Or sink in endless night.

4 Eternal bliss, eternal woe,
Hangs on this inch of time below;
On this precarious breath,
The God of nature only knows,
Whether another year shall close,
Ere I expire in death.

5 Long ere the sun shall run its round,
I may be buried under ground,
And there in silence rot!
Alas one hour my close the scene
And ere twelve months may roll between
My name be quite forgot.

6 But shall my soul be then extinct,
Or cease to live, or cease to think?
It cannot, cannot be;
Thou, my immortal, cannot die,
What wilt thou do or whither fly,
When death shall set thee free;

7 Will mercy then its arms extend?
Will Jesus be thy guardian fried,
And heaven thy dwelling place?
Or shall insulting fiends appear
To drag thee down to dark despair,
Beyond the reach of grace?

8 A heaven or hell, and these alone,
Beyond this mortal life are known,
There is no middle state;
To-day attend the call divine,
To-morrow may be none of thine,
Or it may be too late.

9 O! do not pass this life in dreams
Vast is the change, whate'er it seems,
To poor unthinking men:
Lord, at thy footstool I would bow,
Bid conscience tell me plainly now,
What it will tell me then.

10 If in destruction's road I stray,
Help me to choose that better way,
Which leads to joys on high;
Thy grace impart, my guilt forgive,
Nor let me ever dare to live,
Such as I dare not die.