Sweet morn! from countless cups of gold,

Thou liftest reverently on high

More incense fine than earth can hold,

To fill the sky.

Where’er the vision’s boundaries glance,

Existence swells with living power,

And all the illumined earth’s expanse

Inhales the hour.

In man, O morn! a loftier good,

With conscious blessing, fills the soul,—

A life by reason understood,

Which metes the whole.

To thousand tasks of fruitful hope,

With skill against his toil, he bends,

And finds his work’s determined scope

Where’er he wends.

From earth and earthly toil and strife

To deathless aims his soul may rise,

Each dawn may wake to better life,

With purer eyes.

Such grace from Thee, O God, be ours,

Renewed with every morning’s ray,

And freshening still with added flowers

Each future day.

To man is given one primal star;

One dayspring’s beam has dawned below;

From Thine our inmost glories are,

With Thine we glow.

Like earth awake and warm and bright,

With joy the spirit moves and burns;

So up to Thee, O Fount of Light,

Our light returns.