Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903.
By John Keble (1792–1866)The Voice of Nature
| SIN is with man at morning break, | |
| And through the livelong day | |
| Deafens the ear that fain would wake | |
| To Nature’s simple lay. | |
| But when eve’s silent footfall steals | 5 |
| Along the eastern sky, | |
| And one by one to earth reveals | |
| Those purer fires on high, | |
| When one by one each human sound | |
| Dies on the awful ear, | 10 |
| Then Nature’s voice no more is drown’d, | |
| She speaks, and we must hear. | |
| Then pours she on the Christian heart | |
| That warning still and deep, | |
| At which high spirits of old would start | 15 |
| Even from their Pagan sleep, | |
| Just guessing, through their murky blind | |
| Few, faint, and baffling sight, | |
| Streaks of a brighter heaven behind, | |
| A cloudless depth of light. | 20 |