ROBERT LEADER
THE HYMN OF LIFE
In church and cathedral, on each Sunday morn,
Hymns fill the rafters and sweet praise is born,
High up to Heaven, on glad tides of song,
Float voices of Faith, a million times strong.
Faltering and failing, my own voice is small,
I know some of the words, but I don’t know them all,
In uncertain moments I lose the tune’s theme,
Or else my mind wanders and drifts in a dream.
But the gaps are all filled by the voices around me,
The harmonious whole is all that surrounds me,
And perhaps when another voice misses a note,
In filling that gap is where I contribute.
Perhaps it’s like that in the Great Hymn of Life,
The Song of Creation, with its joys and its strife.
We all seem so pointless, but we each play a part,
Like the links of a chain, or the beats of a heart.
When one of us fails, or misses a cue,
With all of us trying, someone will win through.
The Great Hymn of Life will go on and on,
Eternally noble, eternally strong.
