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.