Eternal and immortal King,
Thy peerless splendors none can bear;
But darkness veils seraphic eyes,
When God with all His luster’s there.

Yet faith can pierce the awful gloom,
The great Invisible can see;
And with its tremblings mingle joy
In fixed regards, great God, to Thee.

Then every tempting form of sin,
Shamed in Thy presence, disappears;
And all the glowing raptured soul
The likeness it contemplates it wears,

O ever conscious to my heart,
Witness to its supreme desire,
Behold, it presseth on to Thee,
For it hath caught the heav’nly fire.

This one petition would it urge,
To bear Thee ever in its sight;
In life, in death, in worlds unknown,
Its only portion and delight.