Treading the oaths of peace

By cool Siloam's shady rill
how fair the lily grows!
How sweet the breath, beneath the hill,
of Sharon's dewy rose!

As a child, I remember this hymn in our Sunday church services, with a particularly lovely tune (Belmont, by William Gardiner (1812)) and words (by Reginald Heber) referring to unfamiliar placenames.

Lo! such the child whose early feet
the oaths of peace have trod,
whose secret heart, with influence sweet,
is upward drawn to God.

Well, this is how it appears on the first website where I found the words. Of course "oaths of peace" is a typo for "paths of peace".

I was thinking of this hymn this afternoon as I was one of a few tens of thousands (?) marching through London, protesting against the attacks on civilians in the Middle East and against the British and US governments' refusal to back calls for a ceasefire. And thinking of all the now too-familiar placenames in Lebanon and Israel which appear daily in my newspaper and which featured in the chants of the crowd.

This hymn disappeared from the Church of Scotland's hymnal when it was revised during my childhood. I don't know why - perhaps just because "Siloam" was too obscure for modern congregations. I wish it were possible that the names of these villages in southern Lebanon and northern Israel, where almost 400, mostly civilians, have died this week, might soon have vanished from our headlines.

By cool Siloam's shady rill
the lily must decay;
the rose that blooms beneath the hill
must shortly fade away.