What is a word? A spirit-birth,
Born of the living soul;
Which, uttered by the voice of man,
Time's power cannot controul.

A gift thou art to man alone,
To bird and beast denied;
To show that to the heavenly race
His nature is allied.

Mysterious Essence! Birth and death
Are in one instant thine;
Yet, born and dying with a breath,
Thy being is divine.

The outward world thou dost ally
To things by man unseen;
And, like an angel, ever pass
The heavens and earth between.

Thou dost to childhood's feeble powers
A help to knowledge lend;
And aid the race, from age to age,
Its wisdom to transcend.

Thou tellest of the distant Past,
And bid'st it live again;
And can, with mystic key, unlock
The Future's dim domain.

Still lingering in our common tongue
We hear the elder speech;
And words, which fell from Adam's lips,
His latest offspring reach.

The world and all it holds shall fade,
And man himself shall die;
But thou, unchanged, shalt live the same,
Through God's eternity.