The end of the line "Jesus, Lord, to Thee we raise" ascends (when sung to the tune "St. George's, Windsor," at least), so there's a musical representation of the (metaphorical) "rais[ing]."
Those first two lines are inverted so that the direct objects ("Songs of thankfulness and praise") actually come first. The musical representation of raising becomes even more interesting because what is being raised are "songs," like the hymn itself. It's a bit self-referential; with an ascending melody, the hymn describes raising songs.
