Invocation

On Him I call who keeps the worlds, the Lord
Whose praises deck the tongue as gems the sword ;
Dewed with the fountain of whose grace the tongue
Finds its best rapture when His name is sung.
To mortal sense each moment He declares
Ten thousand subtleties like finest hairs.
He formed the tongue to comb those hairs, and laid
The teeth in even rows that task to aid.
Supreme, omniscient, God for ever reigns ;
He lifts the humble and the weak sustains.
He framed the roof of heaven’s revolving sphere,
And bade the elements their walls uprear.
He bids the rose that decks the hush unfold,
Balmed with the musk He gives, her leaves of gold.
From Him the flowers, the brides of Spring, receive
The glorious raiment which His fingers weave.
He bids the cypress by the river-side
Lift her fair form erect in stately pride.
He to the great of soul gives high renown,
And casts the arrogant and foolish down.
Still near to those who watch the night away,
He is the Friend who cheers the toiler’s day.
His vernal clouds from bounteous seas upborne
Bedew alike the jasmine and the thorn.
Rich from His mines the winds of Autumn blow,
And o’er the mead a gold- wrought carpet throw.
I-Iis body is the sun’s resplendent sphere,
Lighting each atom, be it far or near.
If from the sun or moon He hid His face,
Each globe would perish, lost in empty space.
To us His grace the boon of being gives:
In His existence every creature lives.
Go, with the foot of lightest fancy tread
Down to earth’s centre from the vault o’erhead ;
Above, below, no spot thine eye shall find
Marked with no impress of His sovereign mind.
To Him their forms embodied creatures owe :
Before His glory loftiest heads are low.
To tell His nature weak is wit and lore ;
Hopeless the search that would His ways explore.
Unless He meet and guide us on our way,
Farther, still farther from His grace we stray.
When loud hosannas laud with high acclaim
His might and majesty, a pang of shame
Thrills through the angels in His court who own
They ne’er may know Him as He should be known,
And heaven’s revolving sphere itself, dismayed,
Would cease from motion and awhile he stayed.
Let us, mere handfuls of the shifting dust,
Purge our soul’s mirror from ambition’s rust,
Low on the knee of wondering silence sink,
And on our brief existence cease to think.