Christ My Song - 800
O Lord, the most fair, the most tender - The chase
(Heinrich Suso/Frances Bevan/Johannes Thomas Rüegg)
The chase.
Isaiah 41,17.
1. O Lord, the most fair, the most tender,
my heart is adrift and alone;
my heart is aweary and thirsty –
athirst for a joy unknown.
From a child I have followed it – chased it,
by wilderness, wold, and hill –
I never have reached it or seen it,
yet must I follow it still. (PDF - Midi)
2. In those olden years did I seek it
in the sweet fair things around,
but the more I sought and thirsted,
the less, O my Lord, I found.
When nearest it seemed to my grasping,
it fled like a wandering thought;
I never have known what it is, Lord –
too well know I what it is not.
3. "It is I, it is I, the Eternal,
who chose thee mine own to be –
who chose thee before the ages –
who chose thee eternally.
I stood in the way before thee,
in the ways thou wouldest have gone;
for this is the mark of my chosen,
that they shall be mine alone."
Frances Bevan, Hymns of Ter Steegen, Suso and others 1, 1899, 54-55, after Heinrich Suso.