Cowslips

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Long ago, in springs of old

Translator: Frances Bevan (1899)
Published in 1 hymnal

Representative Text

Long ago, in springs of old,
Happy days would be,
When in meadows green and gold
I might wander free.
High the sunny clouds up-piled,
Blue the April sky,
Birds and flowers and all things wild
Glad and free as I.
Oh how merry was the shout,
When the stile was passed,
“Joy! the cowslips all are out!
Spring is come at last!”
There in sweet and sunny air
Who can tell the bliss?
Costly shops and gardens fair
Have no joys like this.
Playthings, countless, fresh, and sweet,
Scattered wide and free,
All around the children’s feet,
Gifts of God to me.
Whilst I waked, and whilst I slept,
Through the winter wild,
All the tender flowers He kept
For His little child—
Kept them safe beneath the snow,
Safe through wind and rain,
Till in sunshine all aglow
They arise again.
Oh what joys are kept for me
In His secret place,
Till the Spring that soon shall be,
When I see His Face!

Source: Hymns of Ter Steegen and Others (Second Series) #137

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Translator: Frances Bevan

Bevan, Emma Frances, née Shuttleworth, daughter of the Rev. Philip Nicholas Shuttleworth, Warden of New Coll., Oxford, afterwards Bishop of Chichester, was born at Oxford, Sept. 25, 1827, and was married to Mr. R. C. L. Bevan, of the Lombard Street banking firm, in 1856. Mrs. Bevan published in 1858 a series of translations from the German as Songs of Eternal Life (Lond., Hamilton, Adams, & Co.), in a volume which, from its unusual size and comparative costliness, has received less attention than it deserves, for the trs. are decidedly above the average in merit. A number have come into common use, but almost always without her name, the best known being those noted under “O Gott, O Geist, O Licht dea Lebens," and "Jedes Herz will etwas… Go to person page >

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