Take refuge in God’s greatness
Cover of Waterhouse’s Companions of the Way
Today's Devotional
Be a rock of refuge for me, where I can always go —Psalm 71:3 (Holman).
As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,
Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God:
I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies,
In the freedom that fills all the space ’twixt the marsh and the skies:
By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod,
I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God.
About the author and the source
Sidney Lanier (1842–1881) was a Georgia-born poet, artist, musician, lecturer, and Confederate soldier who struggled most of his short life with tuberculosis. Elizabeth Hodgkin Waterhouse (1834–1918) came of a distinguished family of English Quakers, and compiled anthologies and wrote books “in an attractive homiletic vein” (The Times, April 6, 1918).
Sidney Lanier in Companions of the Way, chosen and arranged by Elizabeth Waterhouse. London: Methuen and Co., 1908.