Thou Heart! why dost thou lift thy voice?
The birds are mute; the skies are dark;
Nor doth a living thing rejoice;
Nor doth a living creature hark:
Yet thou art singing in the dark.

How small thou art; how poor and frail;
Thy prime is past; thy friends are chill:
Yet as thou hadst not any ail
Throughout the storm thou liftest still
A praise that winter cannot chill.

Then sang that happy heart reply:
“God lives, God loves, and hears me sing;
How warm, how safe, how glad am I,
In shelter 'neath His spreading wing!—
And there I cannot choose but sing.