This is a great and thoughtful poem by Frank E. Greene that is set as a hymn here to Thomas Tallis’s THIRD MODE MELODY.
I was struggling to find out anything about the author when I came across this obituary and it just might be him.
This hymnal says Tallis’s tune has had it’s rhythm modified. I got chords from Liturgy Share and had a go at a backing but the time shifts made it difficult. Since the hymnal says can be sung to KINGSFOLD, maybe it should be.
1 Mid canyons deep of brick and stone,
Where is your presence, Lord?
How may your purposes be known
In steel and painted board?
Not, surely, through the marks of greed
Or monuments of strife,
But through what serves our human need,
And dignifies man’s life.2 In honesty of work and plan
Is your own truth expressed;
In harmony of earth and man
Is grace made manifest.
The leader with a social view,
The workman’s patient skill,
Speak eloquently, Lord, of you,
Whose purpose they fulfil.3 Shine forth within our cities, Lord,
Not in just field and wood,
Till to our building is restored
A sense of common good.
May the embodiments of sin
In which we work and dwell
Become true temples, Lord, wherein
Your praises we may tell.
