Lucis creator optime

Qui mane junctum vesperi, diem vocari praecipis, illabitur tetrum chaos, audi preces cum fletibus.

Ne mens gravata crimine, vitae sit exsul munere, dum nil perenne cogitat, seseque culpis illigat.

Hear, lest the whelming weight of crime Wreck us with life in view; Lest thoughts and schemes of sense and time Earn us a sinner's due.

Whose wisdom joined in meet array the morn and eve, and named them Day: night comes with all its darkling fears; regard Thy people's prayers and tears.

Lest, sunk in sin, and whelmed with strife, they lose the gift of endless life; while thinking but the thoughts of time, they weave new chains of woe and crime.

"[5] In the daily pattern of Vespers in the Roman Breviary, Lucis Creator Optime is the first in a sequence of hymns which allude to the seven days of the Biblical creation.

[6] As with much traditional evening hymnody in Christian worship, the text makes reference to the creation of life by God, and allusions to the sun's rays and contrasting shadows are metaphors for the concepts of divine grace and original sin.

In the Church of England an adapted version of Caswall's translation by J. Chandler was included in William Henry Monk's 1861 hymnbook, Hymns Ancient and Modern.