University of Virginia Library

God! Fearful majesty is in the sound
Of that dread syllable. The soul bows down
At its enunciation, filled with awe,
Of Him who is incomprehensible;
Who fills immensity, whose name is God;
Who is from everlasting, and who knows
Nor past, nor future; living through all time,
In one eternal now. To whom all space
Illimitable is a single point,
An ever present here. Immensity
Was full of Him, while yet he dwelt alone,
The perfect light, life, love, and happiness,
Defying diminution or increase.
God! who in his omnipotence arose
And spake void chaos into solid forms
And thin vacuity. God! who in light
Went forth, and filled the boundless universe
With such a flood of glory that the spheres
Awoke, and with adoring melody
Commenced the movements of the radiant dance,
Of which the mystic mazes, until now
They braid, in perfect order, shining each
And singing with the splendour and the bliss
Caught in that earliest morning of God's light.
God! who walked through his universe in life,
While vegetation in its myriad forms
Sprang from the dust, each catching from the light
The hue or softened tint its texture loved.
And living creatures, strong and beautiful
In sentient life, walked gravely on the earth,
Swam in the floods, or floated on the air.
God; who in love touched every sentient chord,
Attuning them to bliss, so that each thread
And fibre of his animated works
Felt his exalted touch, and gave its tone
To the full chorus of the raptured hymn.

Oh, can these finite instruments of praise,
By searching, find out God? Can we, whose feet
Cleave to our parent-earth, whose utmost stretch
Of vision is a point on this small globe,
This speck amongst his works; whose longest time
Is less than nothing, measured on the scale
Of his eternity; whose holiest thoughts
Are dim and feeble rays, that struggle forth
Into the darkness of a stormy night,
From the immortal lamp, that burns within
The earthen lantern of mortality:—
Shall man in pride presume to search out God,
The Everliving, the Omnipotent,
The Omnipresent, the creating God,
Who keeps the innumerable hosts of worlds
All balanced in their orbits, and to whom
The smallest creature in the universe
Is equally apparent, equally
An object of his care, with those great globes
That rush, with streaming light and mighty sound,
Sweeping wide circles through immensity?

Shall man, who seeks in vain to understand
How the small ray of God within himself,
Communes with the brute matter of his form,
Question of God? presuming God within
The narrow compass of his feeble mind?
Amazing pride of bloated ignorance!
That he, who cannot analyze one drop
Of summer rain, should think to lay the whole
Of the vast ocean with its mysteries
So open that an infant's intellect
Might count its atoms, comprehend and tell
The wonders over which unfathomed depths
Have rolled in darkness since the world was made.

God has revealed sufficient of himself
To fill the intellect he gave and bend
The spirit down before him.
Let not pride
Attempt to climb upon a beam of light
Up to the centre of the burning sun,
And search its intense nature.
Equally
Vain and presumptuous is the hope to scan
The nature or the perfect ways of God.