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C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

And Have I Measured Half My Days

By Charles Wesley (1707–1788)

AND have I measured half my days,

And half my journey run,

Nor tasted the Redeemer’s grace,

Nor yet my work begun?

The morning of my life is past,

The noon is almost o’er;

The night of death approaches fast,

When I can work no more.

Oh, what a length of wretched years

Have I lived out in vain!

How fruitless all my toils and tears!

I am not born again.

Evil and sad my days have been,

And all a painful void,

For still I am not saved from sin,

For still I know not God.

Darkness he makes his secret place,

Thick clouds surround his throne;

Nor can I yet behold his face,

Or find the God unknown.

A God that hides himself he is,

Far off from mortal sight,

An inaccessible abyss

Of uncreated light.

Far off he is, yet always near;

He fills both earth and heaven;

But doth not to my soul appear—

My soul from Eden driven.

O’er earth a banished man I rove,

But cannot feel him nigh:

Where is the pardoning God of Love,

Who stooped for me to die?

I sought him in the secret cell,

With unavailing care:

Long did I in the desert dwell,

Nor could I find him there.

Still every means in vain I try;

I seek him far and near:

Where’er I come, constrained to cry,

“My Savior is not here.”

God is in this, in every place;

Yet oh, how dark and void

To me! ’tis one great wilderness,

This earth without my God.

Empty of Him who all things fills,

Till he his light impart,

Till he his glorious Self reveals,

The veil is on my heart.

O thou who seest and know’st my grief,

Thyself unseen, unknown,

Pity my helpless unbelief,

And take away the stone!

Regard me with a gracious eye;

The long-sought blessing give;

And bid me, at the point to die,

Behold thy face and live.

A darker soul did never yet

Thy promised help implore:

Oh, that I now my Lord might meet,

And never lose him more!

Now, Jesus, now the Father’s love

Shed in my heart abroad;

The middle wall of sin remove,

And let me in to God!