With envious impotent desire

Verse 1
With envious impotent desire,
The creatures wallowing in the mire,
The human herd he sees,
But no delight in sin can taste,
Harast, and quite worn out at last
In Satan’s drudgeries.

Verse 2
His wishes, were they all fulfil’d,
No real happiness could yield,
The filthy sinful kind
Could never satisfy his need;
On vanity themselves they feed,
On ashes, husks, and wind.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘He would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him.'—[Luke 15,] v. 16.” This hymn appears in the 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 235.
Publishing: Public Domain