ETERNAL God omnipotent! The One
Sole Hope of worlds, Author and Guard alone
Of heaven and earth Thou art, whose high behest
Forbids the tempest’s billow-bearing breast
The land to whelm — which fires the orb of noon,
And fills the crescent of the milder moon;
Who’st meted forth alternate day and night
And numbered all the stars — their places bright,
Their signs, times, courses only known to Thee —
Who hast to many forms, most wondrously,
The new earth shaped, and given to dead dust life:
Who hast lost Man restored, for fruit of strife
Forbid, bestown on him a higher food,
And healed the Serpent’s sting by sacred blood:
Who hast, when men (save those borne in the Ark)
Were tombed in floods of whelming waters dark
From one sole stock again the race renewed
(A sign that sin-slain man, through noble wood
Once more should be redeemed), and sent to save
One Fount baptismal all the world to lave!
Ope me the way that to the City bright
Leads forth; let thy Word’s lamp be light
To guide my footsteps through the narrow gate,
Where the Good Shepherd feeds His sheep elate:
There first the Virgin’s white Lamb entered
And all His fair flock followed where He led!
With Thee how smooth the way: for Nature all
Thine empire owns! Thou speak’st, her fetters fall
And all her wonted shows new forms assume:
The frozen fields will into verdue bloom
And winter gild with grain: if Thou but will
‘Mid budding Spring the swelling grape shall fill,
And sudden labour tread the bursting vine.
All seasons answer to the call Divine!
So ancient Faith attests, so tell the hours —
No time can change, no age abate Thy powers!
Whereof to sing, in little part, afraid
I seek, as entering a great forest-glade
One strives an over-arching bough to reach.
What were an hundred tongues, an iron speech,
Or what were man an hundredfold to show
Things more than all the lucid stars that glow,
And all the sands where all the oceans flow!
(Caelius Sedulius)
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