Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

Let all mortal flesh keep silence is an ancient chant of Eucharistic devotion based on words from Habakkuk 2:20, "Let all the earth keep silence before him". The original was composed in Greek as a Cherubic Hymn for the Offertory of the Divine Liturgy of St James in the fourth century, with local churches adopting arrangements in Syriac. In modern times, the Ralph Vaughan Williams arrangement of a translation from the Greek by Gerard Moultrie to the tune of Picardy, a French medieval folk melody, popularized the hymn among other Christian congregations.

The Moultrie translation is written in 87.87 Trochaic meter. Therefore, winged in the first line of the fourth stanza ought to be read or sung as a single syllable. However, the two-syllable variant wingèd has become commonly accepted, especially outside of the United Kingdom.