High peaks and sunlit prairies, earth's silent places, hark! lost caves where nothing varies the dank and secret dark: to oceans depths unseeing, to circling planets dumb, the source of all your being, your absent Lord, is come! Earth's countless living creatures, all nature's legions, hark! the myriad forms and features that peopled Noah's ark. In creaturehood, and sharing the narrow gate of birth, the news goes forth declaring your King has come to earth! And nature's child and master, have we no news to mark? no cheer against disaster, no comfort through the dark? A lost world's new beginning, a dark night's blaze of morn! to hearts grown old in sinning, to us, a child is born.