Text · full lyrics
We sing greatness of our God
That made the mountains rise,
That spread the flowing seas abroad
And built the lofty skies.
We sing the wisdom that ordained
The sun to rule the day;
The moon shines full at his command,
And all the stars obey.
We sing the goodness of the Lord
That filled the earth with food;
He formed the creatures with his word
And then pronounced them good.
Lord, how Thy wonders are displayed,
Where'er we turn our eyes,
In ev'ry season of the year,
And through the changing skies.
There's not a plant or flower below
But makes Thy glories known,
And clouds arise and tempests blow
By order from Thy throne;
While all that borrows life from Thee
Is ever in Thy care,
And everywhere that man can be,
Thou, God, are present there.
The lyricist
Isaac Watts
Isaac Watts was a Congregationalist minister who spent his working life pastoring an Independent church in London — one of the Nonconformist congregations that stood outside the Church of England — for years at the meeting house on Mark Lane. He grew up inside that tradition, his father jailed more than once for it, and grew impatient with the only church music it permitted: stiff, archaic metrical settings of the Psalms, sung from a worn psalter that one later critic dismissed as written with the best intentions and the worst taste. The story goes that he complained once too often, and his father told him to write something better if he thought he could; the hymn he produced in answer, "Behold the Glories of the Lamb," was the first of more than eight hundred he would write. He spent much of what followed giving the Psalms fresh English settings of his own — which is where "O Bless the Lord, My Soul" comes from, his recasting of Psalm 103 in place of the clumsy older version then in the books.
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