VocalEssence Ensemble Singers

Philip Brunelle, Conductor

THE KINGDOM OF GOD (IN NO STRANGE LAND)
Steven Stucky
O world invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!

Does the fish soar to find the ocean?
The eagle plunge to find the air—
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumor of thee there,

Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars!—
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.

The angels keep their ancient places;
Turn but a stone and start a wing!
‘Tis ye, ‘tis your estranged faces,
That miss the many-splendoured thing.

O world invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee.
—from In No Strange Land, by Francis Thompson