Sung at a Baptizing, December 28, 1800

Come muse with love’s exalted flame

   On this majestic site,

Its solemn grace, its awful claim,

   And all its pure delight.

How glorious to the thoughtful mind

   These silent waves appear,

Our souls the dear resemblance find

   Of Jesu’s sorrows here.

What honours on the mystic flood,

   Are through the sign confer’d,                                              10

To speak the sufferings of a God,

   In death’s black wave inter’d.

Saviour, we seek the wat’ry tomb,

   Illum’d by love divine,

Far from the deep tremendous gloom,

   Of that which once was thine.

Down to the hallowed grave we go,

   Obedient to thy word,

’Tis thus the gazing world shall know

   We’re buried with our Lord.                                             20

’Tis thus we bid its pomps adieu,

   And boldly venture in;

O may we rise to life anew,

   And only die to sin.

Text: Timothy Whelan, ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011),  vol. 5, p. 75; Attwater Papers, acc. 76, II.A.2, p. 4, Angus Library, Oxford.