Thou Son of God, Thou Son of man,

Whose eyes are as a flame of fire,

With kind concern regard my pain,

And mark my labouring heart’s desire!

Its inmost folds are known to Thee,

Its secret plague I need not tell;

Nor can I hide, nor can I flee

The sin I ever groan to feel.

My soul it easily besets;

About my bed, about my way,

My soul at every turn it meets,

And half persuades me to obey.

Nothing I am, and nothing have,

Nothing my helplessness can do;

But Thou art good, and strong to save,

And all that seek may find Thee true.

How shall I ask, and ask aright?

My lips refuse my heart to obey:

But all my wants are in Thy sight;

My wants, my fears, my sorrows pray.

I want Thy love, I fear Thy frown,

My own foul sin I grieve to see:

To escape its force, would now sink down,

And die, if death could set me free.

Yet, O, I cannot burst my chain,

Or fly the body of this death:

Immured in flesh I still remain,

And gasp a purer air to breathe.

I groan to break my prison-walls,

And quit the tenement of clay;

Nor yet the shatter’d mansion falls,

Nor yet my soul escapes away.

Ah, Lord! Wouldst Thou within me live,

No longer then should I complain,

Nor sighing wish, nor weeping grieve

For Christ my life, or death my gain.

From grief and sin I then should cease;

My loosen’d tongue should then declare

Comfort, and love, and joy, and peace,

Fill all the soul when Christ is there!