Verse 1
Nor doth his love eclipse his might,
Or lessen his majestick powers,
Though stooping from his glory’s height;
Who is so great a God as ours!
Verse 2
He in the hollow of his hand
Measur’d the vast unbounded main;
The wide-extended heavens he span’d:
Infinity his arms contain.
Verse 3
He meeted out the earth, and pois’d
The mountains, hung on empty space,
When all the morning-stars rejoic’d,
And shouted their Creator’s praise.
Verse 4
Creation’s line his wisdom laid,
He grasp’d the chaos with his fist;
Sea, air, and earth, and heaven he weigh’d,
And bad th’ exact machine consist.
Verse 5
Who with the great omniscient God,
Angel or man in council join’d,
To him the way of judgment shew’d,
Or taught that all-informing mind?
Verse 6
He high enthron’d above all height
A partner in his work disdains;
In power and knowledge infinite
The self-directed Spirit reigns.
Verse 7
See the vast tribes that crowd the face
Of earth, the islands scatter’d wide;
Survey the whole of human-race,
Their wealth, their number, and their pride!
Verse 8
Light as the balance-dust, and small
To him as the minutest grain,
Their millions into nothing fall,
Or “swell to be discern’d in vain.”
Verse 9
The nations with their God compare
(A drop with the unfathom’d sea)
They vanish all, dissolv’d in air,
And lost in his immensity.
Verse 10
Lighter than vanity, and less
Than nothing, he on all looks down;
Nor can their services appease
His wrath, or mitigate his frown.
Verse 11
Lebanon brings her stores in vain,
Nor all her cedars can afford,
Not all her beasts for sinners slain,
An offering worthy of their Lord.
Verse 12
Nothing the creature adds to him,
From whom their borrow’d being flow’d,
Who self-sufficient and supream
Exists, the one eternal God.