HYMN TO THE SUN
(North American Indian)
Great Spirit! Master of our lives. Great Spirit! Master of things visible and invisible, and who daily makes them visible and invisible. Great Spirit! Master of every other spirit, good or bad, command the good to be favorable unto us, and deter the bad from the commission of evil.
O Grand Spirit! preserve the strength and courage of our warriors, and augment their numbers, that they may resist oppression from our enemies, and recover our country and the rights of our fathers.
O Grand Spirit! preserve the lives of such of our old men as are inclined to give counsel to the young. Preserve our children and multiply their number, and let them be the comfort and support of declining age. Preserve our corn and our animals, and let no famine desolate the land. Protect our villages, guard our lives!
O Great Spirit! when hidden in the west protect us from our enemies, who violate the night and do evil when thou art not present. Good Spirit! make known to us your pleasure by sending to us the Spirit of Dreams. Let the Spirit of Dreams proclaim thy will in the night, and we will perform it in the day; and if it say the time of some be closed, send them, Master of Life, to the great country of souls, where they may meet their friends, and where thou art pleased to shine upon them with a bright, warm and perpetual blaze!
O Grand, O Great Spirit! hearken to the voice of the nations, hearken to all thy children, and remember us always, for we are descended from thee.
Courage, nations, courage! the Great Spirit, now above our heads, will make us vanquish our enemies; he will cover our fields with corn, and increase the animals of our woods. He will see that the old be made happy, and that the young augment. He will make the nations prosper, make them rejoice, and make them put up their voice to him, while he rises and sets in their land, and while his heat and light can thus gloriously shine out.
The nations must prosper; they have been looked upon by the Great Spirit. What more can they wish? Is not that happiness enough? See, he retires, great and content, after having visited his children with light and universal good.
O Grand Spirit! sleep not longer in the gloomy west, but return and call your people to light and life—to light and life—to light and life.