ETERNAL God omnipotent!
The One
Sole Hope of worlds, Author
and Guard alone
Of heaven and earth Thou art,
whose high behest
Forbids the tempest's billow-bearing
breast
The land to whelm -- which fires
the orb of noon,
And fills the crescent of the
milder moon;
Who'st meted forth alternate
day and night
And numbered all the stars --
their places bright,
Their signs, times, courses
only known to Thee --
Who hast to many forms, most
wondrously,
The new earth shaped, and given
to dead dust life:
Who hast lost Man restored,
for fruit of strife
Forbid, bestown on him a higher
food,
And healed the Serpent's sting
by sacred blood:
Who hast, when men (save those
borne in the Ark)
Were tombed in floods of whelming
waters dark
From one sole stock again the
race renewed
(A sign that sin-slain man,
through noble wood
Once more should be redeemed),
and sent to save
One Fount baptismal all the
world to lave!
Ope me the way that to the City
bright
Leads forth; let thy Word's
lamp be light
To guide my footsteps through
the narrow gate,
Where the Good Shepherd feeds
His sheep elate:
There first the Virgin's white
Lamb entered
And all His fair flock followed
where He led!
With Thee how smooth the way:
for Nature all
Thine empire owns! Thou
speak'st, her fetters fall
And all her wonted shows new
forms assume:
The frozen fields will into
verdue bloom
And winter gild with grain:
if Thou but will
'Mid budding Spring the swelling
grape shall fill,
And sudden labour tread the
bursting vine.
All seasons answer to the call
Divine!
So ancient Faith attests, so
tell the hours --
No time can change, no age abate
Thy powers!
Whereof to sing, in little part,
afraid
I seek, as entering a great
forest-glade
One strives an over-arching
bough to reach.
What were an hundred tongues,
an iron speech,
Or what were man an hundredfold
to show
Things more than all the lucid
stars that glow,
And all the sands where all
the oceans flow! |
