19

A HYMN OF NATURE

AN ODE WRITTEN FOR MUSIC

The music composed by Sir Hubert Parry, performed at the Gloucester Festival, 1898

I

POWER eternal, power unknown, uncreate:

Force of force, fate of fate.

Beauty and light are thy seeing,

Wisdom and right thy decreeing,

Life of life is thy being.

In the smile of thine infinite starry gleam,

Without beginning or end,

Measure or number,

Beyond time and space,

Without foe or friend,

In the void of thy formless embrace,

All things pass as a dream

Of thine unbroken slumber.

II

Gloom and the night are thine:

On the face of thy mirror darkness and terror,
The smoke of thy blood, the frost of thy breath.

In silence and woful awe

Thy harrying angels of death

Destroy whate'er thou makest

Makest, destroyest, destroyest and makest.

Thy gems of life thou dost squander,

Their virginal beauty givest to plunder, Doomest to uttermost regions of age-long ice To starve and expire:

Consumest with glance of fire,

Or back to confusion shakest

With earthquake, elemental storm and thunder.

III

In ways of beauty and peace
Fair desire, companion of man,
Leadeth the children of earth.

As when the storm doth cease,
The loving sun the clouds dispelleth,
And woodland walks are sweet in spring;
The birds they merrily sing
And every flower-bud swelleth.
Or where the heav'ns o'erspan
The lonely downs

When summer is high:

Below their breezy crowns
And grassy steep

Spreadeth the infinite smile of the sunlit sea;
Whereon the white ships swim,

And steal to havens far

Across the horizon dim,

Or lie becalm'd upon the windless deep,
Like thoughts of beauty and peace,
When the storm doth cease,

And fair desire, companion of man,

Leadeth the children of earth.

IV

Man, born to toil, in his labour rejoiceth;

His voice is heard in the morn:

He armeth his hand and sallieth forth
To engage with the generous teeming earth,
And drinks from the rocky rills
The laughter of life.

Or else, in crowded cities gathering close,
He traffics morn and eve
In thronging market-halls;
Or within echoing walls
Of busy arsenals

Weldeth the stubborn iron to engines vast;
Or tends the thousand looms
Where, with black smoke o'ercast,
The land mourns in deep glooms.

Life is toil, and life is good:
There in loving brotherhood

Beateth the nation's heart of fire.

Strife! Strife! The strife is strong!

There battle thought and voice, and spirits conspire In joyous dance around the tree of life,

And from the ringing choir

Riseth the praise of God from hearts in tuneful song.

V

Hark! What spirit doth entreat

The love-obedient air?

All the pomp of his delight
Revels on the ravisht night,
Wandering wilful, soaring fair:
There! 'Tis there, 'tis there.
Like a flower of primal fire
Late redeem'd by man's desire.

Away, on wings away

My spirit far hath flown,

To a land of love and peace,

Of beauty unknown.

The world that earth-born man,
By evil undismay'd,

Out of the breath of God

Hath for his heaven made.

Where all his dreams soe'er
Of holy things and fair
In splendour are upgrown,
Which thro' the toilsome years
Martyrs and faithful seers

And poets with holy tears
Of hope have sown.

There, beyond power of ill,
In joy and blessing crown'd,
Christ with His lamp of truth
Sitteth upon the hill

Of everlasting youth,

And calls His saints around.

VI

Sweet compassionate tears
Have dimm'd my earthly sight,
Tears of love, the showers wherewith

The eternal morn is bright:

Dews of the heav'nly spheres.

With tears my eyes are wet,

Tears not of vain regret,

Tears of no lost delight,

Dews of the heav'nly spheres

Have dimm'd my earthly sight,

Sweet compassionate tears.

VII

Gird on thy sword, O man, thy strength endue,
In fair desire thine earth-born joy renew.
Live thou thy life beneath the making sun
Till Beauty, Truth, and Love in thee are one.

Thro' thousand ages hath thy childhood run:
On timeless ruin hath thy glory been:
From the forgotten night of loves fordone
Thou risest in the dawn of hopes unseen.

Higher and higher shall thy thoughts aspire,
Unto the stars of heaven, and pass away,
And earth renew the buds of thy desire
In fleeting blooms of everlasting day.

Thy work with beauty crown, thy life with love;
Thy mind with truth uplift to God above:
For whom all is, from whom was all begun,
In whom all Beauty, Truth, and Love are one.