While nature yielding to despair

Verse 1
While nature yielding to despair
Her blasted expectation mourns,
After a length of years, the prayer
In the most helpless case returns,
The powerful word at last comes down,
And lo, the barren bears a son!

Verse 2
Then let us patiently attend,
To Him the time and manner leave,
Till God the long-sought blessing send,
Till Christ his gracious fulness give,
And faith’s maturest fruit we prove
In finish’d holiness and love.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “'Thy prayer is heard.'—[Luke 1,] v. 13.” Wesley originally published this hymn in his 1762 hymnal "Short Hymns on Select Passages of the Holy Scriptures, Vol. 2" (Bristol: Farley, 1762). He later revised and expanded it in his unpublished 1766 manuscript “MS Luke.” 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 1977/575, Charles Wesley Notebooks Box 3). 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. 11 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1871), page 102.
Publishing: Public Domain