Maria Jane Jewsbury

There Is None Like unto Thee

  Jeremiah x. 6.

IN the dark winter of affliction's hour,
When summer friends and pleasures haste away,
And the wrecked heart perceives how frail each power,
It made a refuge, and believed a stay;
When man all wild and weak is seen to be
There's none like thee, O Lord, there's none like thee!
When the world's sorrow working only death,
And the world's comfort caustic to the wound,
Make the wrung spirit loathe life's daily breath,
As jarring music from a harp untuned;
While yet it dare not from the discord flee,
There's none like thee, O Lord! there's none like thee!
When the tossed mind surveys its hidden world,
And feels in every faculty a foe,
United but in strife; waves urged and hurled
By passion and by conscience, winds of woe,
Till the whole being is a storm-swept sea
There's none like thee, O Lord! there's none like thee!
Thou, in adversity, canst be a sun;
Thou hast a healing balm, a sheltering tower,
The peace, the truth, the life, the love of ONE,
Nor wound, nor grief, nor storm, can overpower;
Gifts of a king; gifts, frequent and yet free,
There's none like thee, O Lord! none, none like thee!