Solemn, memorable day

Verse 1
Solemn, memorable day
That snatch’d my darling Son away,
Calm I welcome thy return
Which summons me again to mourn,
After a sad length of years
To pour again my selfish tears,
To bleed with undiminish’d smart,
And feel the recent wound of heart.

Verse 2
Time may gently bring relief,
Assuage, or cure a common grief,
I no end of sorrow see,
Till harbour’d in eternity:
Then, my God, and not before
My penal woes shall all be o’re,
And gloomy sorrow flee away
At the first dawn of endless day.

Verse 3
Now accepting my distress,
I suffer out my evil days,
Softly toward the tomb I tread,
Myself lamenting, not the dead;
Till my Life in death appears,
And Jesus, banishing my fears,
Chears by the beauties of his Face
Or’ewhelms me with the glorious Blaze!

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “Written January 7, 1768.” This hymn appears in the ca. 1786 manuscript “MS Miscellaneous Hymns.” This manuscript is part of the collection of the Methodist Archive and Research Centre in The John Rylands Library, The University of Manchester (accession number MA 1977/556, Charles Wesley Notebooks Box 2). Accessed through the website of The Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition, Duke Divinity School. Published in The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 8 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1870), page 409.
Publishing: Public Domain