Come, oh! come, with sacred lays, <br />Let us sound th' Almighty's praise; <br />Hither bring in true concent, <br />Heart, and voice, and instrument. <br />Let the orpharion sweet, <br />With the harp and viol meet: <br />To your voices tune the lute: <br />Let not tongue nor string be mute; <br />Nor a creature dumb be found, <br />That hath cither voice or sound. <br /> <br />Let such things as do not live, <br />In still music praises give: <br />Lowly pipe, ye worms that creep <br />On the earth or in the deep; <br />Loud aloft your voices strain, <br />Beasts and monsters of the main, <br />Birds, your warbling treble sing; <br />Clouds, your peals of thunder ring; <br />Sun and moon exalted higher, <br />And you, stars, augment the choir. <br /> <br />Come, ye sons of human race, <br />In this chorus take your place, <br />And amid this mortal throng, <br />Be you masters of the song. <br />Angels and celestial powers, <br />Be the noblest tenor yours. <br />Let, in praise of God, the sound <br />Run a never-ending round; <br />That our holy hymn may be <br />Everlasting, as is He. <br /> <br />From the earth's vast hollow womb, <br />Music's deepest bass shall come. <br />Sea and floods, from shore to shore, <br />Shall the counter-tenor roar. <br />To this concert, when we sing, <br />Whistling winds, your descant bring: <br />Which may bear the sound above, <br />Where the orb of fire doth move; <br />And so climb from sphere to sphere, <br />Till our song th' Almighty hear. <br /> <br />So shall He from heaven's high tower <br />On the earth His blessing shower; <br />All this huge wide orb we see, <br />Shall one choir, one temple be; <br />There our voices we will rear, <br />Till we fill it everywhere: <br />And enforce the fiends that dwell <br />In the air to sink to hell. <br />Then, oh! come, with sacred lays, <br />Let us sound th' Almighty's praise.<br /><br />George Wither<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/psalm-cxlviii/
