Awake! Awake, Sleeper!
Thy Saviour, Thy Keeper
Is calling to thee froth the dead to arise;
For the Star of the Morning
The blue dome adorning
Is waiting to light up thy slumber-sealed eyes.
How bright is its shining!
The clouds of night lining
With glory celestial—a glory renowned:
Dark Golgotha’s horrors,
Its searchings, its sorrows,
For thee hath a crown incorruptible found.
Then awake from thy slumber!
Why longer encumber
Thy spirit with earth and its perishing joys,
Its pastimes, its pleasures,
Its moth-eaten treasures,
Its fancies, its follies, its tinsel, its toys?
Arise from thy dreaming,
From men and their scheming,
From darkness to light, from the false to the true;
From the dead thou abhorrest
To Him thou adorest,
From fetters to freedom, from old things to new.
Let not this world bind thee,
Let not its god blind thee,
Let not drunken drivel the voice of Christ drown;
Of faith rise defender
And never surrender,
Hold fast, lest another inherit thy crown.
Awake! Awake, Sleeper!
The darkness grows deeper,
And wrinkled with wrath is the forehead of heaven,
And soon shall be falling
God’s vengeance appalling,
And rebels accursed from His face shall be driven.
From glory eternal,
From regions supernal,
In love to thy soul is His call sent to thee;
Let not this world’s clamour,
Its glitter, its glamour,
So wilder thou neither canst hearken nor see.
By virtue and glory,
By His deathless story,
By all that He suffered to ransom thy soul,
By His cross, by His dying,
By His might death defying,
To life art thou called, then make haste to the goal.