Child of the stable's secret birth

Words: Timothy Dudley-Smith
Music: Thomas Hewitt Jones

Child of the stable's secret birth,
The Lord by right of the lords of earth,
Let angels sing of a King new-born
The world is weaving a crown of thorn:
A crown of thorn for that infant head
Cradled soft in the manger bed.

Eyes that shine in the lantern's ray;
A face so small in its nest of hay
Face of a Child who is born to scan
The world of men through the eyes of man:
And from that face in the final day
Earth and heaven shall flee away.

Voice that rang through the courts on high
Contracted now to a wordless cry,
A voice to master the wind and wave,
The human heart and the hungry grave:
The voice of God through the cedar trees
Rolling forth as the sound of seas.

Child of the stable's secret birth,
The Father's gift to a wayward earth,
To drain the cup in a few short years
Of all our sorrows, our sins and tears -
Ours the prize for the road he trod:
Risen with Christ; at peace with God.