Hymn 61. Psalm 8

O Lord, how glorious is thy name

Through the wide earth’s extended frame!

Majestic glories form thy seat,

And Heaven adores beneath thy feet.

Thy power from tender babes can raise                                              

A monument of wonderous praise:                                                                   

At thy command, the infant song

Shall still the proud blasphemer’s tongue.

When all thy shining works on high

I meditate with raptur’d eye,                                                                             

The silver moon, the starry train

Which gild the fair etherial plain:

Lord, what is man, that he should share

Thy notice, thy indulgent care?

That man, frail child of earth, should be                                             

The favorite of the Deity?

His place thy forming hand assign’d

But just below th’ angelic kind;

With noblest favours circled round,

And with distinguish’d honours crown’d:                                           

Invested him with power and sway,

And bid the subject brutes obey;

Sovereign of all thy works below,

To him the meaner creatures bow:

The bleating flocks, the lowing herds,                                                 

The gliding fish, the flying birds;

All that the earth’s wide circuit yields,

Native of air, or seas, or fields.

But still let man adoring own,

That thou, O Lord, art King alone;                                                                    

And through the earth’s extended frame,

Declare the glories of thy name.

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 1, pp. 280-81; Collection of Hymns Adapted to Public Worship, no. 61 (all stanzas); Poems, 1780, vol. 2, pp. 139-40; MS, Steele Collection, STE 3/2/1, Angus Library, Regents Park College,  Oxford.