Though God has put me in the world to praise
Each beetle's burnished wing, each blade of grass,
To track the manifold and marvellous ways
Whereon His bright creative footsteps pass;

To glory in the poplars' summer green,
To guard the sunset's glittering hoard of gold,
To gladden when the fallen leaves careen
On fairy keels upon the windy wold.

For this, for this, my eager mornings broke,
For this came sunshine and the lonely rain,
For this the stiff and sleepy woods awoke
And every hawthorn hedge along the lane.

For this God gave me all my joy of verse
That I might shout beneath exultant skies,
And meet, as one delivered from a curse,
The pardon and the pity in your eyes.