The  Beauty  of  Incantation

from  Choruses From The Rock

T. S. Eliot

Out of the sea of sound the life of music

There spring the perfect order of speech, and the beauty of incantation.

For Man is joined spirit and body,

And therefore must serve as spirit and body.

Visible and invisible, two worlds meet in Man;

Visible and invisible must meet in His Temple;

You must not deny the body.

Now you shall see the Temple completed:

The dressed altar, the lifting light,

Light

Light

The visible reminder of invisible Light.

O Light Invisible, we praise Thee!

О Greater Light, we praise Thee for the less;

The eastern light our spires touch at morning,

The light that slants upon our western doors at evening.

The twilight over stagnant pools at batflight,

Moon light and star light, owl and moth light,

Glow-worm glowlight on a grassblade.

O Light invisible, we worship Thee!

We thank Thee for the lights that we have kindled,

The light of altar and of sanctuary;

Small lights of those who meditate at midnight

And lights directed through the coloured panes of windows

And light reflected from the polished stone,

The gilded carven wood, the coloured fresco.

Our gaze is submarine, our eyes look upward

And see the light that fractures through unquiet water.

We see the light but see not whence it comes.

O Light invisible, we glorify Thee!

We thank Thee for our little light, that is dappled with shadow.

We thank Thee who hast moved us to building, to finding,

To forming at the ends of our fingers and beams of our eyes.

And when we have built an altar to the Invisible Light, we may

   set thereon the little lights for which our bodily vision is made.

And we thank Thee that darkness reminds us of light.

O Light Invisible, we give Thee thanks for Thy great glory!