Christ My Song - 849
We yield to death; the fight is lost - The last enemy
(Horatius Bonar/Johannes Thomas Rüegg)
The last enemy.
Nunc impar et uni.
1. We yield to death; the fight is lost,
when the last enemy assails.
Against ten thousand we had fought;
now o n e, and he u n s e e n, prevails. (PDF - Midi)
2. The sting of death is sin; 'tis this
that makes us feeble in the fight:
we shrink and flee; but all in vain;
we cannot face that foe of might.
3. And yet in yielding do we win;
vanquished in this last mortal strife,
we conquer him who conquered us:
through death we enter into life.
4. The grave becomes to us the gate
of glory through eternal years;
and through the clouds that veil the tomb,
our resurrection-sun appears.
5. The sun of an eternal morn, –
morn of the mistless and the bright!
The sun of an eternal noon,
that knows no sunset and no night.
6. Then shall defeat be all reversed,
and I the conqueror at last:
my heel upon the head of death,
my mortal strife for ever past.
7. My Captain is the Prince of Life!
He leads me on, he leads me in;
wounded and baffled oft I am,
but the great field at length I win.
8. Who fights with death must take the wounds
h e took when fighting here below:
who conquers death must share the tomb
of him who overcomes our foe.
Horatius Bonar, The Song of the New Creation, 1872, 50-51.