Angels' Prayer

The sun proclaims its old devotion
in rival song with brother spheres,(1)
and still completes in thunderous motion
the curcuits of its destined years.(2)
Angelic  powers, uncomprehending,
are strengthened as they gaze their fill,
Thy works, unfathomed and unending,
retain the first day's splendour still.(3)


The glorious earth, with mind-appaling
swiftness, upon itself rotates,(4)
and with the deep night's dreadful falling
its primal radiance alternates.
High cliffs stand deep in ocean weather,
wide foaming waves flood out and in,
and cliffs and seas rush on together(5)
caught in the globe's unceasing spin.


And turn by turn the tempests raging
from sea to land, from land to sea,
build up, in passion unassuaging,
their chain of furious energy.
The thunder strikes, its flash is faster,
it spreads destruction on its way.
But we, thy messengers, O master,
revere thy gently circling day.


And each of us, uncomprehending,
is strengthened as we gaze our fill,
for all thy works, sublime, unending,
retain their first day's splendour still.

(1) Pythagoras
(2) Ptolemaeus
(3) The huge Michigan Sea was ecologically dead, but is safe again.
(4) Copernicus, Kepler, Galilei; Aristarch, Eratosthenes, Aryabhata
(5) 29,88 Km/sec