Hymns and Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Hail, Powers sublime, all hail!
Which in the natural or spiritual worlds,
Or here, or in far space,
Or in the far infinity beyond,
His wondrous work perform;
Of whom ye are, and whom
Inanimate or animate, ye serve!

Hail, first to you,
Dread armies of the Lord!
Ye glorious Seraphim and Cherubim!
And Thrones sublime!
Ye countless Dominations, Virtues, Powers!
Ye Principalities! Archangels bright!
And Angels ever blest,
In solemn order ranged!
Hail, Spirits of the Just,
Whose prayer is strength!
Prophets, Apostles, Martyrs of all time!
Virgins, and Confessors, and Pontiffs good!
In purest bliss
Reigning with Heaven's high Queen!

365

Next hail to you,
Great powers of this our sphere!—
Or who in Holy Church,
Regents of Christ,
His Sacraments dispense,
And jurisdiction wield,
Priesthood, Episcopate, and higher still
St. Peter's central throne—
Or who on chair of civil state
Seated supreme,
High o'er the stormy world
Your iron sceptres wave,
Types of His reign to come!

Hail, too, O ye,
Grand movers of mankind!
Sages and Poets dear,
Heroes of land and sea!
Of Art the lords!
And under whatsoever name or form,
O Genius, all thy sons!
Ye! chief of all!
Or great as known to fame,
Or greater still unknown,
Th' Inventors of the world!
By whose laborious search
High Providence through ever-widening ways
This human scheme evolves.

Nor of thyself, O Mind,
Unmindful here be thou,
Nor of thy powers and faculties divine;—
Intelligence supreme!
Thought, Memory, Will,
Conscience, Imagination, Feeling, Sense!
Choice flowers of life!
By grace yet lovelier made.

366

Ye last, all hail!
Dim Forces, which mankind
The Powers of nature call,
Thou, Instinct deep!
Pure mystery of God!
Reigning amid the worlds of living things!
And thou, great sister Force!
Of Gravitation named,
Sovereign amid material elements!
Nor less ye other kindred Influences
Unsearchable in might,
And divers in your kinds!
Which in the earth and water, fire and air,
From hour to hour
Your silent task fulfil!

All these, and many more yet unreveal'd
Or in the book of Nature or of God,
Each within each involved,
Wheel within wheel in many-mingled maze,
(Like that strange vision which Ezechiel saw
By Chobar's mystic stream)
All these, where'er they be,
Confess thine hand, O Lord;
And here, or in far space,
Or in the far infinity beyond,
Not of themselves,
But in Thee only, and for Thee exist,
Dread emblems of Thyself, who all hast made!
Thou the beginning and the end of all!
Nor know we aught,
Where each its issue finds,
Or in the other merges; nor can guess
The proper essence of the very least;
So dense our ignorance
Of that untold, immeasurable abyss,
In which Creation moves!

367

Save that at times of some vast scheme
We catch the vanishing glimpse, as in a dream;
And hear at intervals a tone
Wafted down from spheres unknown,
Telling of things diviner far
Than any that around us are!