III.

All but unutterable Name! Adorable, yet awful, sound! Thee can the sinful nations frame Save with their foreheads to the ground?

Soul-searching and all-cleansing Fire! To see Thy countenance were to die: Yet how beyond the bound retire Of Thy serene immensity?

Thou mov'st beside us, if the spot We change—a noteless, wandering tribe; The orbits of our life and thought In Thee their little arcs describe.

In the dead calm, at cool of day, We hear Thy voice, and turn, and flee:— Thy love outstrips us on our way: From Thee, O God, we fly—to Thee.