Let us with a cheerful mind
Praise the Lord, for He is kind —

No one at all to talk to through the week,
And nobody to answer, should she speak —
In her old outby cottage all alone
Lives Sarah, mute as her own threshold stone;
And all day long keeps turning in her head,
Like a trapped mouse, some thing she might have said.
If only anyone who cared to hear
What she was thinking ever should come near.
So, like the stopped clock on the mantelshelf,
She lives her life, shut up within herself
Six days a week, till Sunday comes, when she,
In the back pew beneath the gallery,
As the whole village joins with one accord,
Lets herself go in singing to the Lord —

And His mercy shall endure,
Ever faithful, ever sure