Bring, O Morn, Thy Music

Bring, O morn, thy music! Night, thy starlit silence!
Oceans, laugh the rapture to the storm winds coursing free!
Suns and planets chorus, Thou art our Creator,
Who wert, and art, and evermore shalt be!

Life and death, Thy creatures, praise Thee, mighty Giver!
Praise and prayer are rising in Thy beast and bird and tree:
Lo! they praise and vanish, vanish at Thy bidding,
Who wert, and art, and evermore shalt be!

Light us! lead us! love us! cry Thy groping nations,
Pleading in the thousand tongues, but naming only Thee,
Weaving blindly out Thy holy, happy purpose,
Who wert, and art, and evermore shalt be!

Life nor death can part us, O Thou Love eternal,
Shepherd of the wandering star and souls that wayward flee!
Homeward draws the spirit to Thy Spirit yearning,
Who wert, and art, and evermore shalt be!

Author: William Channing Gannett

Year: 1893

The hymn is from Gannett's 1893 collection "The Thought of God in Hymns and Poems" (co-published with Frederick Lucian Hosmer). The distinctive repeated refrain and nature imagery are characteristic of the two Unitarian hymn-writers. No other widely recognized author is associated with this text.