Deus Creator omnium Polique Sector. St. Ambrose. [Saturday Evening.] St. Augustine in his Confessions, Bk. ix., refers thus to this hymn:—
" And behold, the corpse [of his mother] was carried to the burial; we went and returned without tears . .. It seemed also good to me to go and bathe, having heard that the bath had its name (balneum) from the Greek Bakavelov, for that it drives sadness from the mind. And this also I confess unto Thy mercy, Father of the fatherless, that I bathed, and was the same as before I bathed. For the bitterness of sorrow could not exude out of my heart. Then I slept, and woke up again, and found my grief not a little softened; and as I was alone in my bed, I remembered those true verses of Tby Ambrose. For Thou art the
"Maker of all, the Lord,
And Ruler of the height,
Who, robing day in light, hast poured
Soft slumbers oer the night,
That to our limbs the power
Of toil may be renew'd,
And hearts be rais'd that sink and cower
And sorrow be subdu'd."
[The Confessions of St. Augustine. Oxford: J. Parker. New edition 1871, p. 195.]
[Rev. W. A. Shouts, B.D.]
Translation in common use:—
Maker of all things, God most high. By J. D. Chambers. First published in his Order for Household Devotion, 1854, and again in his Lauda Syon, 1857, p. 55, in 8 stanzas of 4 lines. In 1862 it was included in the Appendix to the Hymnal Noted, No. 115; in 1867 in the People's Hymnal; in Dr. Martineau's Hymns of Praise & Prayer (abbreviated), 1873; and in other hymnbooks. In the Hymnary, 1872, it is altered to "0 blest Creator, God Host High."
--Excerpts from John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)