Light Shining Out of Darkness

Cowper’s poem divides neatly into six quatrains, or six groupings of four lines each. The neat division of these stanzas aligns with the verse structure of hymns, and also allows readers to easily follow along with the subject matter of the hymn as the content shifts from an admiration of the mystery of God and an address of God’s followers, to an acknowledgement of humans’ mental inferiority to comprehend God’s plan. The stanzaic structure provides a crisp division between the content shifts.

The meter of the hymn alternates between iambic tetrameter (Line 1: God moves in a mysterious way) in one line and iambic trimeter (Line 2: His wonders to perform) in the following line. An iamb is a poetic metrical unit consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. A tetrameter line contains four of these units, while a trimeter line features three units. This repetitive pattern creates a meter that is comfortable and predictable, like the familiar melody of a favorite song. This is fitting since the work was originally published in a collection of hymns. The sing-song rhythm of the lines makes the verses memorable and assist with the flow of the text.