| OF all great Nature’s tones that sweep | |
| Earth’s resonant bosom, far or near, | |
| Low-breathed or loudest, shrill or deep, | |
| How few are grasped by mortal ear. | |
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| Ten octaves close our scale of sound: | 5 |
| Its myriad grades, distinct or twined, | |
| Transcend our hearing’s petty bound, | |
| To us as colours to the blind. | |
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| In Sound’s unmeasured empire thus | |
| The heights, the depths alike we miss; | 10 |
| Ah, but in measured sound to us | |
| A compensating spell there is! | |
| |
| In holy music’s golden speech | |
| Remotest notes to notes respond: | |
| Each octave is a world; yet each | 15 |
| Vibrates to worlds its own beyond. | |
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| Our narrow pale the vast resumes; | |
| Our sea-shell whispers of the sea: | |
| Echoes are ours of angel-plumes | |
| That winnow far infinity! | 20 |
| |
| —Clasp thou of Truth the central core! | |
| Hold fast that centre’s central sense! | |
| An atom there shall fill thee more | |
| Than realms on Truth’s circumference. | |
| |
| That cradled Saviour, mute and small, | 25 |
| Was God—is God while worlds endure! | |
| Who holds Truth truly holds it all | |
| In essence, or in miniature. | |
| Know what thou know’st! He knoweth much | |
| Who knows not many things: and he | 30 |
| Knows most whose knowledge hath a touch | |
| Of God’s divine simplicity. | |
