Philocrites

Hymn: The rising sun.

by Philocrites

Cast off the cloak of night and greet the dawn
Clothed in the new-spun radiance of the sun;
Your shadowed ways, my soul, are now undone —
In grace and brilliant light continue on.

The stars may flicker but they fade away
As heralds of the advent of one star,
Their light a scattered brilliance from afar —
My orbit rounds one fire and source of day.

My soul is held and, turning, is returned
By love unseen, a gravity sublime.
Though light had failed, as my heart in its time,
Your dawn, O God, has graced my life unearned.

Toward the tomb I turn, but not in fear.
Night's captive for a season, but then freed.
In waiting earth, my soul a planted seed —
Christ is the rising sun; now day is here.

— Christopher L. Walton, 1998

Meter: 10 . 10 . 10 . 10 .

I recommend singing this hymn text with Cyril V. Taylor's tune "Coolinge." You are welcome to use this text in congregational worship so long as my authorship is noted and the text is unchanged. Please contact me if you'd like to publish it or suggest changes. I'd love to hear from congregations that use my hymns.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Copyright © 2007 by Philocrites | Posted 8 April 2007 at 7:46 AM

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