Songs of Religion and Life :: :: University of Virginia Library

All things are full of God. Thus spoke
Wise Thales in the days
When subtle Greece to thought awoke
And soared in lofty ways.
And now what widom have we more?
No sage divining-rod
Hath taught than this a deeper lore,
All things are full of God.

II

The Light that gloweth in the sky
And shimmers in the sea,
That quivers in the painted fly
And gems the pictured lea,
The million hues of Heaven above
And Earth below are one,
And every lightful eye doth love
The primal light, the Sun.

III

Even so, all vital virtue flows
From life's first fountain, God;
And he who feels, and he who knows,
Doth feel and know from God.
As fishes swim in briny sea,
As fowl do float in air,
From Thy embrace we cannot flee;
We breathe, and Thou art there.

IV

Go, take thy glass, astronomer,
And all the girth survey
Of sphere harmonious linked to sphere,
In endless bright array.
All that far-reaching Science there
Can measure with her rod,
All powers, all laws, are but the fair
Embodied thoughts of God.

V

And if there be who of blind laws
And soulless forces talk,
Who feed vain doubts with fancied flaws,
With these I will not walk.
But as a child to father clings,
Or flower to sapful sod,
The living well within me springs
Of all great thoughts from God.

VI

O Thou, who didst the heart inspire
Of Thales and his peers,
And touched the prophet-lips with fire
Of holy Hebrew seers,
Teach Thou in great and small my will
To own Thy sovereign rod,
Holding this faith firm-rooted still,
All things are full of God.