Antiphon for the Angels

By Hildegard of Bingen
Spirited light! on the edge
of the Presence your yearning
burns in the secret darkness,
O angels, insatiably
into God's gaze.

Perversity
could not touch your beauty;
you are essential joy.
But your lost companion,
angel of the crooked
wings—he sought the summit,
shot down the depths of God
and plummeted to hell,
hissing counsels of ruin
in the ears of God's new
creation.

Copyright Credit: Hildegard of Bingen , "Antiphon for Divine Wisdom" from Symphonia: A Critical Edition of the “Symphonia Armonie Celestium Revelationum,” Second Edition, translated by Barbara Newman. Copyright © 1988, 1998 by Cornell University.  Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Cornell University Press.
Source: Symphonia: A Critical Edition of the “Symphonia Armonie Celestium Revelationum” (Cornell University Press, 1988)