He takes the sheen of the waving wheat
Where the slow cloud-shadows pass,
He takes the brook's soft rippling tune
And the daisied meadow's grass,
He takes the swish of the mower's scythe
In the noontide's hot, white glare,
The joy of labour and growing things,
And makes the Summer fair.

He takes the years--the old, the new,
With their charging scenes and brief,
The close-shut bud and the fruiting bough,
Flower and fading leaf,
Grace and glory and lack and loss,
The song, the sigh, the strife,
The joy of hope and the hope fulfilled,
And makes of the years a life.

He takes our lives and the sum of them,
His will and the will of man,
Evil and god and dream and deed,
His purpose and our plan,
The thwarted lives and the crippled lives
And the things that give them worth,
The joy of life and the pain of life,
And HE makes the Heavens and Earth.