Who giv’st me yet a longer space

Verse 1
Who giv’st me yet a longer space
A moment’s merciful reprieve,
Saviour, vouchsafe the softnin[g] grace,
The pure, divine affection give,
And then my grateful soul remove
To grasp in Thee the God I love.

Verse 2
Now let thy dying love constrain
My heart to make the kind return,
To love my loving Lord again,
The Comforter of all that mourn;
The weary burthen’d sinner’s rest,
Prepare, and take me to thy breast.

Verse 3
United with thy sacrifice,
Memorial sweet before the throne,
O might this faithful prayer arise,
And bring the great salvation down,
The peace, which human thought transcends,
The mystic joy which never ends.

Verse 4
Soon as the antepast I feel,
Thy love’s ineffable delight,
Saviour, thy majesty reveal,
That soul-beatifying Sight,
That Sight to raptur’d Seraphs given,
That Sight, which makes an heaven of Heaven!

Hymnal/Album: This hymn appears in the manuscript “MS Preparation for Death.” 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 1977/578, Charles Wesley Notebooks Box 3). Accessed through the website of The Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition, Duke Divinity School. Introduced in Charles Wesley, Preparation for Death, in Several Hymns (London, 1772). Published in The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 7 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1870), page 405.
Publishing: Public Domain