We Lift Our Hearts to Thee

492 We Lift Our Hearts to Thee

1 We lift our hearts to thee,
   O Day-star from on high!
   The sun itself is but thy shade,
   Yet cheers both earth and sky.

2 O let thy orient beams
   The night of sin disperse!
   The mists of error, and of vice,
   Which shade the universe!

3 How beauteous nature now!
   How dark and sad before!
   With joy we view the pleasing change,
   And nature’s God adore.

4 May we this life improve,
   To mourn for errors past,
   And live this short revolving day,
   As if it were our last.

5 To God, the Father, Son,
   And Spirit, one and three,
   Be glory, as it was, is now,
   And shall for ever be.
                         John Wesley
                         The Methodist Hymnal, 1964 edition

<idle musing>
John Wesley didn't write a lot of hymns. He preferred to translate them and to edit Charles's hymns. Besides, Charles was a much better hymnwriter! That being said, the ones John wrote tended to be pretty solid, like this one, which occurs in around 165 hymnals. Hymnary.org inserts a verse:

4 O may no gloomy crime
   Pollute the rising day;
   Or Jesu’s blood, like evening dew,
   Wash all our stains away.

</idle musing>