TO THE NAME ABOVE EVERY NAME, THE NAME OF JESUS:
A HYMN.
I SING the name which none can say
But touch'd with an interior ray :
The name of our new peace; our good:
Our bliss and supernatural blood:
The name of all our lives and loves.
Hearken, and help, ye holy doves!
The high-born brood of Day; you bright
Candidates of blissful light,
The heirs elect of Love, whose names belong
Unto the everlasting life of song;
All ye wise souls, who in the wealthy breast
Of this unbounded name, build your warm nest.
Awake, my glory, Soul, (if such thou be,
And that fair word at all refer to thee),
Awake and sing,
And be all wing;
Bring hither thy whole self; and let me see
What of thy parent Heaven yet speaks in thee.
O thou art poor
Of noble powers, I see,
And full of nothing else but empty me:
Narrow, and low, and infinitely less
Than this great morning's mighty business.
One little world or two
(Alas!) will never do ;
We must have store.
Go, Soul, out of thyself, and seek for more.
Go and request
Great Nature for the key of her huge chest
Of Heavens, the self-involving set of spheres
(Which dull mortality more feels than hears).
Then rouse the nest
Of nimble Art, and traverse round
The airy shop of soul-appeasing sound:
And beat a summons in the same
All-sovereign name,
To warn each several kind
And shape of sweetness, be they such
As sigh with supple wind
Or answer artful touch;
Start into life, and leap with me
Into a hasty fit-tuned harmony.
Nor must you think it much
T'obey my bolder touch;
I have authority in Love's name to take you,
And to the work of Love this morning wake you.
Wake, in the name
Of Him Who never sleeps, all things that are,
Or, what's the same,
Are musical;
Answer my call
And come along ;
That they convene and come away
To wait at the love-crowned doors of this illustrious day.
Shall we dare this, my Soul? we'll do 't and bring
No other note for 't, but the name we sing.
Wake lute and harp, and every sweet-lipped
thing
That talks with tuneful string;
Help me to meditate mine immortal song.
Come, ye soft ministers of sweet sad mirth,
Bring all your household-stuff of Heaven on earth;
O you, my Soul's most certain wings,
Complaining pipes, and prattling strings,
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Bring all the store
Of sweets you have; and murmur that you have no
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more.
Come, ne'er to part,
Nature and Art!
Come; and come strong,
To the conspiracy of our spacious song.
Bring all the powers of praise,
Your provinces of well-united worlds can raise ;
Bring all your lutes and harps of Heaven and Earth ;
Whate'er co-operates to the common mirth;
Vessels of vocal joys,
Or you, more noble architects of intellectual noise,
Cymbals of Heaven, or human spheres,
Solicitors of souls or ears;
And when you are come, with all
That you can bring or we can call:
O may you fix
For ever here, and mix
Yourselves into the long
And everlasting series of a deathless song;
Mix all your many worlds above,
And loose them into one of love.
Cheer thee my heart!
For thou too hast thy part
And place in the Great Throng
Of this unbounded all-embracing song.
Powers of my soul, be proud!
And speak loud
To all the dear-bought Nations this redeeming Name,
And in the wealth of one rich word, proclaim
New similes to Nature. May it be no wrong,
Blest Heavens, to you and your superior song,
That we, dark sons of dust and sorrow,
A while dare borrow
The name of your delights, and our desires,
And fit it to so far inferior lyres.
Our murmurs have their music too,
Ye mighty Orbs, as well as you;
Nor yields the noblest nest
Of warbling Seraphim to the ears of Love,
A choicer lesson than the joyful breast
Of a poor panting turtle-dove.
And we, low worms, have leave to do
The same bright business (ye Third Heavens) with you.
Gentle spirits, do not complain!
We will have care
To keep it fair,
And send it back to you again.
Come, lovely Name! Appear from forth the bright
Regions of peaceful light;
Look from Thine Own illustrious home,
Fair King of names, and come:
Leave all Thy native glories in their gorgeous nest,
And give Thy Self a while the gracious Guest
Of humble souls, that seek to find
The hidden sweets
The attending World, to wait Thy rise,
First turn'd to eyes;
And then, not knowing what to do,
Turn'd them to tears, and spent them too.
Come royal Name! and pay the expense
Which man's heart meets
When Thou art Master of the mind.
Come lovely Name; Life of our hope!
Lo, we hold our hearts wide ope!
Unlock Thy cabinet of Day,
Dearest Sweet, and come away.
Lo, how the thirsty lands
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Gasp for Thy golden showers! with long-stretch'd hands.
Lo, how the labouring Earth
That hopes to be
All Heaven by Thee,
Leaps at Thy birth!
Of all this precious patience;
O come away
And kill the death of this delay!
O, see so many worlds of barren years
Melted and measured out in seas of tears:
O, see the weary lids of wakeful Hope
(Love's eastern windows) all wide ope
With curtains drawn,
To catch the day-break of Thy dawn.
O, dawn at last, long-look'd for Day!
Take Thine own wings and come away.
Lo, where aloft it comes! It comes, among
The conduct of adoring spirits, that throng
Like diligent bees, and swarm about it.
O, they are wise,
And know what sweets are suck'd from out it :
It is the hive,
By which they thrive,
Where all their hoard of honey lies.
An universal synod of all sweets;
By whom it is definèd thus,
That no perfume
For ever shall presume
Lo, where it comes, upon the snowy Dove's
Soft back; and brings a bosom big with loves:
Welcome to our dark world, Thou womb of Day!
Unfold Thy fair conceptions, and display
The birth of our bright joys, O Thou compacted
Body of blessings: Spirit of souls extracted!
O, dissipate Thy spicy powers,
(Cloud of condensed sweets) and break upon us
In balmy showers!
O, fill our senses, and take from us all force of so
profane a fallacy,
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To think aught sweet but that which smells of Thee!
Fair, flowery Name; in none but Thee
And Thy nectareal fragrancy,
Hourly there meets
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