My reigns, my fabric’s every part,
O Lord, the wonders of Thy art
Proclaim, and prompt my willing tongue
To meditate the grateful song:
With deepest awe my thought this frame
Surveys—I tremble that I am.

While yet a stranger to the day
Within the burthened womb I lay,
My bones, familiar to Thy view,
By just degrees to firmness grew:
Thy power my lineaments began,
To shapes prescribed the texture ran.

Day to succeeding day consigned
Th’unfinished birth; Thy mighty mind
Each limb, each nerve, ere yet they were,
Contemplated distinct and clear;
Those nerves Thy curious finger spun,
Those limbs it fashioned one by one.

And, as Thy pen in fair design
Traced on Thy book each shadowy line,
Thy handmaid Nature read them there,
And made the growing work her care,
Conformed it to th’unerring plan,
And gradual wrought me into man.