DESCRIPTION:
These little limbs, these eyes and hands
which I here find,
This panting heart wherewith my my life begins:
Where have ye been? Behind what curtain
were ye from me hid so long?
Where was, in what abyss, my new made tongue?

When silent I so many thousand thousand years
Beneath the dust did in a chaos lie, how
could I smiles or tears,
Or lips, or hands, or eyes, or ears perceive?
Welcome, ye treasures which I now receive.

From dust I rise and out of nothing now awake,
These brighter regions which salute my eyes,
A gift from God I take, the earth, the seas, the light, the lofty skies,
The sun and stars are mine, if these I prize.

A stranger here, strange things doth meet,
strange glory see,
Strange treasures lodged in this fair world
appear,
Strange all, and new to me: But that they
mine should be who nothing was,
That strangest is of all; yet brought to pass.

Gerard Finzi - Dies Natalis (The Salutation)

Susan Gritton / Edward Gardner
Words by Thomas Traherne