Classic Poem

PRAISE unto God! whose single will and might
Upreared the boundless roof of day and night,
With suns, and stars, and glorious cloud-wreaths hung;
The 'blazoned veil that hides the Eternal's throne,
The glorious pavement of a world unknown,
By angels trodden, and by mortals sung.
To God! who fixed old Ocean's utmost bounds,
And bade the Moon, in her harmonious rounds,
Govern its waters with her quiet smiles;
Bade the obedient winds, though seeming free,
Walk the tumultuous surface of the sea,
And place man's daring foot upon a thousand isles!

Praise unto God! who thrust the rifted hills,
With all their golden veins and gushing rills,
Up from the burning centre, long ago;
Who spread the deserts, verdureless and dun,
And those stern realms, forsaken of the sun,
Where Frost hath built his palace-halls of snow!
To God! whose hand hath anchored in the ground
The forest-growth of ages, the profound
Green hearts of solitude, unsought of men!
God! who suspends the avalanche,—who dips
The Alpine hollows in a cold eclipse,
And hurls the headlong torrent shivering down the glen!

Praise unto God! who speeds the lightning's wing
To fearful flight, making the thunder spring
Abrupt and awful from its sultry lair,
To rouse some latent function of the earth,
To bring some natural blessing into birth,
And sweep disorder from the troubled air!
To God! who bids the hurricane awake,
The firm rock shudder, and the mountain quake
With deep and inextinguishable fires;
Who urges ghastly pestilence to wrath,
Sends withering famine on his silent path,
The holy purpose hid from our profane desires.

Praise unto God! who fills the fruitful soil
With wealth, awaking to the hand of toil,
With germs of beauty, and abundance, too;
Who bends athwart the footstool of the skies
His braided sunbow of resplendent dyes,
Melting in rain-drops from the shadowy blue!
To God! who sends the seasons, “dark or bright,”
Spring's frequent resurrection of delight;
Summer's mature tranquillity of mien;
The generous flush of the Autumnal time,
The ever-changing spectacle sublime
Of purgatorial Winter, savage or serene!

Praise unto God! whose wisdom placed me here,
A lowly dweller on this lovely sphere—
This temporary home to mortals given;
Which holds its silent and unerring way
Among the innumerable worlds that stray,
Singing and burning through the halls of heaven!
To God! who sent me hither to prepare,
By wordless worship, and by uttered prayer,
By suffering, humility, and love,
By sympathies and deeds, from self apart,
Nursed in the inmost chambers of the heart,
For that transcendent life of purity above.