Classic Poem

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 rang'd!
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!

Next hail to you,
Great Powers of this our sphere!—
Or who in Holy Church,
Consociate with Peter's central throne,
Regents of Christ,
With sacramental might
Bind and unbind on earth as He in Heaven!—
Or who on chair of state
Seated supreme,
High o'er the stormy world
Your iron sceptres wield,
Types of His reign to come!

Hail, too, to ye,
The Soul's high Faculties!
Intelligence divine!
Invention, Memory, Will,
Conscience, Imagination, Feeling, Sense!
Choice flowers of life!
By grace yet lovelier made.
Ye last, all hail!
Great 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 nam'd.
Sovereign supreme amid material laws!
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 involv'd,
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,
Are Thy great work, 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 great our ignorance
Of that untold, immeasurable abyss,
In which Creation moves!
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!