C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Praise to God
By Anna Letitia Barbauld (17431825)
P
For the love that crowns our days—
Bounteous source of every joy,
Let Thy praise our tongues employ!
For the stores the gardens yield,
For the vine’s exalted juice,
For the generous olive’s use;
Yellow sheaves of ripened grain,
Clouds that drop their fattening dews,
Suns that temperate warmth diffuse—
Scatters o’er the smiling land;
All that liberal Autumn pours
From her rich o’erflowing stores:
Source whence all our blessings flow!
And for these my soul shall raise
Grateful vows and solemn praise.
From its stem the ripening ear—
Should the fig-tree’s blasted shoot
Drop her green untimely fruit—
Nor the olive yield her store—
Though the sickening flocks should fall,
And the herds desert the stall—
The early and the latter rain,
Blast each opening bud of joy,
And the rising year destroy:
Grateful vows and solemn praise,
And, when every blessing’s flown,
Love Thee—for Thyself alone.