Scripture Verse

I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of the holy, and they were forgotten in the city where they had so done. Ecclesiastes 8:10

Introduction

portrait
Horatius Bonar
1808–1889

Words: Ho­ra­ti­us Bo­nar, Hymns of Faith and Hope, sec­ond ser­ies (Lon­don: James Nis­bet, 1861), pag­es 197–98.

Music: As­ton John Hey­wood, 1863. Ap­peared in Hymns An­cient and Mo­dern in 1868 (🔊 pdf nwc).

If you know where to get a good pho­to of Hey­wood (head-and-shoul­ders, at least 200×300 pix­els), would you ?

Lyrics

Wrapt in a Christless shroud,
He sleeps the Christless sleep;
Above him, the eternal cloud,
Beneath, the fiery deep.

Laid in a Christless tomb,
There, bound with felon-chain,
He waits the terrors of his doom,
The judgment and the pain.

O Christless shroud, how cold,
How dark, O Christless tomb!
O grief that never can grow old,
O endless, hopeless doom!

O Christless sleep, how sad!
What waking shalt thou know?
For thee no star, no dawning glad,
Only the lasting woe!

To rocks and hills in vain
Shall be the sinner’s call;
O day of wrath, and death and pain,
The lost soul’s funeral!

O Christless soul, awake,
Ere thy last sleep begin!
O Christ, the sleeper’s slumbers break,
Burst Thou the bands of sin!