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• 
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 Who would have thought my shriveled heart

Could have recovered greenness? It was gone

 Quite underground; as flowers depart

To see their mother-root, when they have blown;

        Where they together

        All the hard weather,

 Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

 These are thy wonders, Lord of power,

Killing and quickening, bringing down to hell

 And up to heaven in an hour;

Making a chiming of a passing-bell,

        We say amiss,

        “This or that is”:

 Thy word is all, if we could spell …

 And now in age I bud again,

After so many deaths I live and write;

 I once more smell the dew and rain,

And relish versing: O my only light,

        It cannot be

        That I am he

 On whom thy tempests fell all night.

 These are thy wonders, Lord of love,

To make us see we are but flowers that glide:

 Which when we once can find and prove,

Thou hast a garden for us, where to [a]bide.

        Who would be more,

          Swelling through store,

 Forfeit their Paradise by their pride. 

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This article is from Christian History magazine #119 The Wonder of Creation. Read it in context here!

By George Herbert

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