Noontide Hymn explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Nature as Divine Revelation

  The speaker loves God's skies, mists, fields, mountains, and wind as expressions of the divine.

• Love as Ultimate Strength

  Love for God's will is presented as the highest and most transformative affection.

Characters to notice

• God

  Addressed throughout the hymn as the source of skies, winds, truth, people, and will.

• Unknown

  The speaker who declares love for God's creation and will.

Key passages

• “I love thy skies, thy sunny mists, Thy fields, thy mountains hoar, Thy wind that bloweth where it lists⁠— Thy will, I love it more.”

  I cherish the beauty of the sky, the mist, the fields, and the ancient mountains, and the free wind, but I cherish your will even more.

  Establishes the central contrast between love for creation and love for God's will.

• “But when thy will my life doth hold Thine to the very core, The world, which that same will doth mould, I love, then, ten times more!”

  When your will completely possesses my life, I love the world that your will shapes ten times more than before.

  Climax revealing that submission to God's will intensifies love for the world.