The eagle wheels around the Kofel crags;
The chamois leaps the tumbling glacier stream;
The sunbeams dance upon the glistening snows
Like pixies, and the wooded mountain slopes
Thrill with the notes of songbirds; hymns of joy
Break from the forests and the smiling plains,
And where the Ammer winds its silvery way,
The wild swan ever follows like a prayer.
Who of God's creatures, then, has lost his way?
'Tis not the chamois, eagle or the swan;
'Tis not the mountain torrent, or the birds
That twitter all day long within the wood;
'Tis not the Ammer flowing to the sea.
Who of God's creatures, then, has lost his way?
Let us go in the Coliseum where
The fresh-hewn cross is lifted to the sky;
Let us gaze on the reverential throng
That marks Christ's passion in a silent awe,
And think a moment on the world of Man--
Man, made in God's own image, yet the one
Of all God's creatures who has lost his way.