Hymns, Festival and Occasional

Christmas.

“Adeste Fideles.”

This hymn is of doubtful authorship, by some assigned to as late a date as 1680, and by others to the 13th century as one of the Latin poems of St. Bonaventura, Bishop of Albano, who was born at Bagnarea in Tuscany, A.D. 1221. He was a learned man, a Franciscan friar, one of the greatest teachers and writers of his church, and finally a cardinal. Certainly Roman Catholic in its origin, whoever was its author, it is a Christian hymn qualified in every way to be sung by the universal church.

Adeste, fideles

Laeti triumphantes,

Venite, venite in Bethlehem;

Natum videte Regem angelorum.

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Chorus.

Venite, adoremus,

Venite, adoremus!

Venite, adoremus Dominum.

This has been translated by Rev. Frederick Oakeley (1808–1880) and by Rev. Edward Caswall (1814–1878) the version of the former being the one in more general use. The ancient hymn is much abridged in the hymnals, and even the translations have been altered and modernized in the three or four stanzas commonly sung. Caswall's version renders the first line “Come hither, ye faithful,” literally construing the Latin words.

The following is substantially Oakeley's English of the “Adeste, fideles.”

O come all ye faithful
Joyful and triumphant,

To Bethlehem hasten now with glad accord;

Come and behold Him,
Born the King of Angels.

Chorus.

O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ, the Lord.

Sing choirs of angels,
Sing in exultation

Through Heaven's high arches be your praises poured;

Now to our God be
Glory in the highest!
O come, let us adore Him!

520 / 460 Yea, Lord, we bless Thee,
Born for our salvation

Jesus, forever be Thy name adored!

Word of the Father
Now in flesh appearing;
O come, let us adore Him!

The hymn with its primitive music as chanted in the ancient churches, was known as “The Midnight Mass,” and was the processional song of the religious orders on their way to the sanctuaries where they gathered in preparation for the Christmas morning service. The modern tune—or rather the tune in modern use—is the one everywhere familiar as the “Portuguese Hymn.” (See page 205.)

Milton's Hymn to the Nativity.

It was the winter wild
While the Heavenly Child

All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lies.

Nature in awe of Him
Had doffed her gaudy trim

With her great Master so to sympathize.

No war nor battle sound
Was heard the world around.

The idle spear and shield were high uphung.

The hooked chariot stood
Unstained with hostile blood,

The trumpets spake not to the armed throng,

And Kings sat still with awful eye

As if they knew their Sovereign Lord was by.

This exalted song—the work of a boy of scarcely twenty-one—is a Greek ode in form, of two 521 / 461 hundred and sixteen lines in twenty-seven strophes. Some of its figures and fancies are more to the taste of the seventeenth century than to ours, but it is full of poetic and Christian sublimities, and its high periods will be heard in the Christmas hymnody of coming centuries, though it is not the fashion to sing it now.

John Milton, son and grandson of John Miltons, was born in Breadstreet, London, Dec. 9, 1608, fitted for the University in St. Paul's school, and studied seven years at Cambridge. His parents intended him for the church, but he chose literature as a profession, travelled and made distinguished friendships in Italy, Switzerland and France, and when little past his majority was before the public as a poet, author of the Ode to the Nativity, of a Masque, and of many songs and elegies. In later years he entered political life under the stress of his Puritan sympathies, and served under Cromwell and his successor as Latin Secretary of State through the time of the Commonwealth. While in public duty he became blind, but in his retirement composed “Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.” Died in 1676.

The Tune.

In the old “Carmina Sacra” a noble choral (without name except “No war nor battle sound”) well interprets portions of the 4th and 5th stanzas of the great hymn, but replaces the line—

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“The idle spear and shield were high uphung.”

—with the more modern and less figurative—

“No hostile chiefs to furious combat ran.”

Three stanzas are also added, by the Rev. H.O. Dwight, missionary to Constantinople. The substituted line, which is also, perhaps, the composition of Mr. Dwight, rhymes with—

“His reign of peace upon the earth began,”

—and as it is not un-Miltonic, few singers have ever known that it was not Milton's own.

Dr. John Knowles Paine, Professor of Music at Harvard University, and author of the Oratorio of “St. Peter,” composed a cantata to the great Christmas Ode of Milton, probably about 1868.

Professor Paine died Apr. 25, 1906.

It is worth noting that John Milton senior, the great poet's father, was a skilled musician and a composer of psalmody. The old tunes “York” and “Norwich,” in Ravenscroft's collection and copied from it in many early New England singing-books, are supposed to be his.

The Miltons were an old Oxfordshire Catholic family, and John, the poet's father, was disinherited for turning Protestant, but he prospered in business, and earned the comfort of a country gentleman. He died, very aged, in May, 1646, and his son addressed a Latin poem (“Ad Patrem”) to his memory.

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“Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”

This hymn of Charles Wesley, dating about 1730, was evidently written with the “Adeste Fideles” in mind, some of the stanzas, in fact, being almost like translations of it. The form of the two first lines was originally—

Hark! how all the welkin rings,

“Glory to the King of Kings!”

—but was altered thirty years later by Rev. Martin Madan (1726–1790) to—

Hark! the herald angels sing

Glory to the new-born King!

Other changes by the same hand modified the three following stanzas, and a fifth stanza was added by John Wesley—

Hail the heavenly Prince of Peace!

Hail the Sun of Righteousness!

Light and life to all He brings,

Ris'n with healing in His wings.

The Tune.

“Mendelssohn” is the favorite musical interpreter of the hymn. It is a noble and spirited choral from Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's cantata, “Gott ist Licht.”

“Joy to the World, the Lord Is Come!”

This inspirational lyric of Dr. Watts never grows old. It was written in 1719.

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Joy to the world! the Saviour reigns!

Let men their songs employ

While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains

Repeat the sounding joy.

Dr. Edward Hodges (1796–1867) wrote an excellent psalm-tune to it which is still in occasional use, but the music united to the hymn in the popular heart is “Antioch,” an adaptation from Handel's Messiah. This companionship holds unbroken from hymnal to hymnal and has done so for sixty or seventy years; and, in spite of its fugue, the tune—apparently by some magic of its own—contrives to enlist the entire voice of a congregation, the bass falling in on the third beat as if by intuition. The truth is, the tune has become the habit of the hymn, and to the thousands who have it by heart, as they do in every village where there is a singing school, “Antioch” is “Joy to the World,” and “Joy to the World” is “Antioch.”

“Hark! What Mean Those Holy Voices?”

This fine hymn, so many years appearing with the simple sign “Cawood” or “J. Cawood” printed under it, still holds its place by universal welcome.

Hark! what mean those holy voices

Sweetly sounding through the skies?

Lo th' angelic host rejoices;

Heavenly hallelujahs rise.

Hear them tell the wondrous story,

Hear them chant in hymns of joy,
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Glory in the highest, glory,

Glory be to God on high!

The Rev. John Cawood, a farmer's son, was born at Matlock, Derbyshire, Eng., March 18, 1775, graduated at Oxford, 1801, and was appointed perpetual curate of St. Anne's in Bendly, Worcestershire. Died Nov. 7, 1852. He is said to have written seventeen hymns, but was too modest to publish any.

The Tune.

Dr. Dykes' “Oswald,” and Henry Smart's “Bethany” are worthy expressions of the feeling in Cawood's hymn. In America, Mason's “Amaland,” with fugue in the second and third lines, has long been a favorite.

“While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks.”

This was written by Nahum Tate (1652–1715), and after two hundred years the church remembers and sings the song. Six generations have grown up with their childhood memory of its pictorial verses illustrating St. Luke's Christmas story.

While shepherds watched their flocks by night,

All seated on the ground,

The angel of the Lord came down

And glory shone around.

“Fear not” said he, for mighty dread

Had seized their troubled mind,

“Glad tidings of great joy I bring

To you and all mankind.”

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The Tune.

Modern hymnals have substituted “Christmas” and other more or less spirited tunes for Read's “Sherburne,” which was the first musical translation of the hymn to American ears. But, to show the traditional hold that the New England fugue melody maintains on the people, many collections print it as alternate tune. Some modifications have been made in it, but its survival is a tribute to its real merit.

Daniel Read, the creator of “Sherburne,” “Windham,” “Russia,” “Stafford,” “Lisbon,” and many other tunes characteristic of a bygone school of psalmody, was born in Rehoboth, Mass., Nov. 2, 1757. He published The American Singing Book, 1785, Columbian Harmony, 1793, and several other collections. Died in New Haven, Ct., 1836.

“It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.”

Rev. Edmund Hamilton Sears, author of this beautiful hymn-poem, was born at Sandisfield, Berkshire Co., Mass., April 6, 1810, and educated at Union College and Harvard University. He became pastor of the Unitarian Church in Wayland, Mass., 1838. Died in the adjoining town of Weston, Jan. 14, 1876. The hymn first appeared in the Christian Register in 1857.

It came upon the midnight clear,

That glorious song of old,
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From angels bending near the earth

To touch their harps of gold.

“Peace to the earth, good will to men

From Heaven's all-gracious King.”

The world in solemn stillness lay,

To hear the angels sing.

Still through the cloven skies they come

With peaceful wings unfurled

And still their heavenly music floats

O'er all the weary world.

Above its sad and lonely plains

They bend on hovering wing,

And ever o'er its Babel sounds

The blessed angels sing.

The Tune.

No more sympathetic music has been written to these lines than “Carol,” the tune composed by Richard Storrs Willis, a brother of Nathaniel Parker Willis the poet, and son of Deacon Nathaniel Willis, the founder of the Youth's Companion. He was born Feb, 10, 1819, graduated at Yale in 1841, and followed literature as a profession. He was also a musician and composer. For many years he edited the N.Y. Musical World, and, besides contributing frequently to current literature, published Church Chorals and Choir Studies, Our Church Music and several other volumes on musical subjects. Died in Detroit, May 7, 1900.

The much-loved and constantly used advent psalm of Mr. Sears,—

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Calm on the listening ear of night

Come heaven's melodious strains

Where wild Judea stretches far

Her silver-mantled plains,

—was set to music by John Edgar Gould, and the smooth choral with its sweet chords is a remarkable example of blended voice and verse.

“O Little Town of Bethlehem!”

Phillips Brooks, the eloquent bishop of Massachusetts, loved to write simple and tender poems for the children of his church and diocese. They all reveal his loving heart and the beauty of his consecrated imagination. This one, the best of his Christmas Songs, was slow in coming to public notice, but finally found its place in hymn-tune collections.

O little town of Bethlehem,

How still we see thee lie!

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep

The silent stars go by;

Yet in thy dark streets shineth

The everlasting light;

The hopes and fears of all the years

Are met in thee tonight.

For Christ is born of Mary,

And gathered all above,

While mortals sleep, the angels keep

Their watch of wondering love.

O morning stars, together

Proclaim the holy birth!

And praises sing to God the King

And peace to men on earth.

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How silently, how silently,

The wondrous gift is given!

So God imparts to human hearts

The blessings of His heaven.

No ear may hear His coming,

But in this world of sin,

Where meek souls will receive Him still

The dear Christ enters in.

Phillips Brooks, late bishop of the diocese of Massachusetts, was born in Boston, Dec. 13, 1835; died Jan. 23, 1893. He was graduated at Harvard in 1855, and at the Episcopal Divinity School of Alexandria, Va., 1859. The first ten years of his ministry were spent in Pennsylvania, after which he became rector of Trinity Church, Boston, and was elected bishop in 1891. He was an inspiring teacher and preacher, an eloquent pulpit orator, and a man of deep and rich religious life.

The hymn was written in 1868, and it was, no doubt, the ripened thought of his never-forgotten visit to the “little town of Bethlehem” two years before.

The Tune.

“Bethlehem” is the appropriate name of a tune written by J. Barnby, and adapted to the words, but it is the hymn's first melody (named “St. Louis” by the compiler who first printed it in the Church Porch from original leaflets) that has the credit of carrying it to popularity.

The composer was Mr. Redner, organist of the Church of the Holy Trinity, Philadelphia, of which 530 / 470 Rector Brooks was then in charge. Lewis Henry Redner, born 1831, was not only near the age of his friend and pastor but as much devoted to the interests of the Sunday-school, for whose use the hymn was written, and he had promised to write a score to which it could be sung on the coming Sabbath. Waking in the middle of the night, after a busy Saturday that sent him to bed with his brain “in a whirl,” he heard “an angel strain,” and immediately rose and pricked the notes of the melody. The tune had come to him just in time to be sung. A much admired tune has also been written to this hymn by Hubert P. Main.

Palm Sunday.

Faure's “Palm Branches.”

Sur nos chemins les rameaux et les fleurs
Sont repandos—

O'er all the way green palms and blossoms gay

Are strewn to-day in festive preparation,

Where Jesus comes to wipe our tears away.

E'en now the throng to welcome Him prepare;

Join all and sing.—

Jean Baptiste Faure, author of the words and music, was born at Moulins, France, Jan. 15, 1830. As a boy he was gifted with a beautiful voice, and crowds used to gather wherever he sang in the 531 / 471 streets of Paris. Little is known of his parentage, and apparently the sweet voice of the wandering lad was his only fortune. He found wealthy friends who sent him to the Conservatoire, but when his voice matured it ceased to serve him as a singer. He went on with his study of instrumental music, but mourned for his lost vocal triumphs, and his longing became a subject of prayer. He promised God that if his power to sing were given back to him he would use it for charity and the good of mankind. By degrees he recovered his voice, and became known as a great baritone. As professional singer and composer at the Paris Grand Opera, he had been employed largely in dramatic work, but his “Ode to Charity” is one of his enduring and celebrated pieces, and his songs written for benevolent and religious services have found their way into all Christian lands.

His “Palm-Branches” has come to be a sine qua non on its calendar Sunday wherever church worship is planned with any regard to the Feasts of the Christian year.

Easter.

Perhaps the most notable feature in the early hymnology of the Oriental Church was its Resurrection songs. Being hymns of joy, they called forth all the ceremony and spectacle of ecclesiastical 532 / 472 pomp. Among them—and the most ancient one of those preserved—is the hymn of John of Damascus, quoted in the second chapter (p. 54). This was the proclamation-song in the watch-assemblies, when exactly on the midnight moment at the shout of “Christos egerthe!” (Χριστὸς ἠγέρθη.) “Christ is risen!” thousands of torches were lit, bells and trumpets pealed, and (in the later centuries) salvos of cannon shook the air.

Another favorite hymn of the Eastern Church was the “Salve, Beate Mane,” “Welcome, Happy Morning,” of Fortunatus. (Chap. 10, p. 357.) This poem furnished cantos for Easter hymns of the Middle Ages. Jerome of Prague sang stanzas of it on his way to the stake.

An anonymous hymn, “Poneluctum, Magdelena,” in medieval Latin rhyme, is addressed to Mary Magdelene weeping at the empty sepulchre. The following are the 3d and 4th stanzas, with a translation by Prof. C.S. Harrington of Wesleyan University:

Gaude, plaude, Magdalena!

Tumba Christus exiit!

Tristis est peracta scena,

Victor mortis rediit;

Quem deflebas morientem,

Nunc arride resurgentem!

Alleluia!

Tolle vultum, Magdalena!

Redivivum aspice;

Vide frons quam sit amœna,

Quinque plagas inspice;

Fulgent, sic ut margaritæ,

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Ornamenta novæ vitæ.

Alleluia!

Magdalena, shout for gladness!

Christ has left the gloomy grave;

Finished is the scene of sadness;

Death destroyed, He comes to save;

Whom with grief thou sawest dying,

Greet with smiles, the tomb defying.

Hallelujah!

Lift thine eyes, O Magdalena!

Lo! thy Lord before thee stands;

See! how fair the thorn-crowned forehead;

Mark His feet, His side, His hands;

Glow His wounds with pearly whiteness!

Hallowing life with heavenly brightness!

Hallelujah!

The hymnaries of the Christian Church for seventeen hundred years are so rich in Easter hallelujahs and hosannas that to introduce them all would swell a chapter to the size of an encyclopedia—and even to make a selection is a responsible task.

Simple mention must suffice of Luther's—

In the bonds of death He lay;

—of Watts'—

He dies, the Friend of sinners dies;

—of John Wesley's—

Our Lord has gone up on high;

—of C.F. Gellert's—

Christ is risen! Christ is risen!

He hath burst His bonds in twain;

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—omitting hundreds which have been helpful in psalmody, and are, perhaps, still in choir or congregational use.

“Christ the Lord Is Risen Today”

Begins a hymn of Charles Wesley's and is also the first line of a hymn prepared for Sunday-school use by Mrs. Storrs, wife of the late Dr. Richard Salter Storrs of Brooklyn, N.Y.

Wesley's hymn is sung—with or without the hallelujah interludes—to “Telemann's Chant,” (Zeuner), to an air of Mendelssohn, and to John Stainer's “Paschale Gaudium.” Like the old New England “Easter Anthem” it appears to have been suggested by an anonymous translation of some more ancient (Latin) antiphony.

Jesus Christ is risen to day,

Hallelujah!

Our triumphant holy day,

Hallelujah!

Who endured the cross and grave.

Hallelujah!

Sinners to redeem and save,

Hallelujah!

An Anthem for Easter.

This work of an amateur genius, with its rustic harmonies, suited the taste of colonial times, and no doubt the devout church-goers of that day 535 / 475 found sincere worship and thanksgiving in its flamboyant music. “An Anthem for Easter,” in A major by William Billings (1785) occupied several pages in the early collections of psalmody and “the sounding joy” was in it. Organs were scarce, but beyond the viols of the village choirs it needed no instrumental accessories. The language is borrowed from the New Testament and Young's Night Thoughts.

The Lord is risen indeed!

Hallelujah!

The Lord is risen indeed!

Hallelujah!

Following this triumphant overture, a recitative bass solo repeats I Cor. 15:20, and the chorus takes it up with crowning hallelujahs. Different parts, per fugam, inquire from clef to clef—

And did He rise?
And did He rise?—

Hear [the answer], O ye nations!

Hear it, O ye dead!

Then duet, trio and chorus sing it, successively—

He rose! He rose! He rose!

He burst the bars of death,
And triumphed o'er the grave!

The succeeding thirty-four bars—duet and chorus—take home the sacred gladness to the heart of humanity—

Then, then I rose,

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And seized eternal youth,
Man all immortal, hail!

Heaven's all the glory, man's the boundless bliss.

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“Yes, the Redeemer Rose.”

In the six-eight syllable verse once known as “hallelujah metre”—written by Dr. Doddridge to be sung after a sermon on the text in 1st Corinthians noted in the above anthem—

Yes, the Redeemer rose,

The Saviour left the dead,

And o'er our hellish foes

High raised His conquering head.

In wild dismay the guards around

Fall to the ground and sink away.

Lewis Edson's “Lenox” (1782) is an old favorite among its musical interpreters.

“O Short Was His Slumber.”

This hymn for the song-service of the Ruggles St. Church, Boston, was written by Rev. Theron Brown.

O short was His slumber; He woke from the dust;

The Saviour death's chain could not hold;

And short, since He rose, is the sleep of the just;

They shall wake, and His glory behold.

Dear grave in the garden; hope smiled at its door

Where love's brightest triumph was told;

Christ lives! and His life will His people restore!

They shall wake, and His glory behold.

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The music is Bliss' tune to Spafford's “When Peace Like a River.”

Another by the same writer, sung by the same church chorus, is—

He rose! O morn of wonder!

They saw His light go down

Whose hate had crushed Him under,

A King without a crown.

No plume, no garland wore He,

Despised death's Victor lay,

And wrapped in night His glory,

That claimed a grander day.

He rose! He burst immortal

From death's dark realm alone,

And left its heavenward portal

Swung wide for all his own.

Nor need one terror seize us

To face earth's final pain,

For they who follow Jesus,

But die to live again.

The composer's name is lost, the tune being left nameless when printed. The impression is that it was a secular melody. A very suitable tune for the hymn is Geo. J. Webb's “Millennial Dawn” (“the Morning Light is breaking.”)

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Thanksgiving.

“Die Felder Wir Pflügen Und Streuen.”

We plow the fields and scatter

The good seed on the land,

But it is fed and watered

By God's Almighty hand,

He sends the snow in winter,

The warmth to swell the grain,

The breezes, and the sunshine

And soft, refreshing rain,

All, all good gifts around us

Are sent from heaven above

Then thank the Lord, O thank the Lord

For all His love!

Matthias Claudius, who wrote the German original of this little poem, was a native of Reinfeld, Holstein, born 1770 and died 1815. He wrote lyrics, humorous, pathetic and religious, some of which are still current in Germany.

The translator of the verses is Miss Jane Montgomery Campbell, whose identity has not been traced. Hers is evidently one of the retiring names brought to light by one unpretending achievement. English readers owe to her the above modest and devout hymn, which was first published here in Rev. C.S. Bere's Garland of Songs with Tunes, 1861.

Little is known of Arthur Cottman, composer to Miss Campbell's words. He was born in 1842, and died in 1879.

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“With Songs and Honors Sounding Loud.”

Stanzas of this enduring hymn of Watts' have been as often recited as sung.

He sends His showers of blessing down

To cheer the plains below;

He makes the grass the mountains crown,

And corn in valleys grow.

The Tune,

One of the chorals—if not the best—to claim partnership with this sacred classic, is John Cole's “Geneva,” distinguished among the few fugue tunes which the singing world refuses to dismiss. There is a growing grandeur in the opening solo and its following duet as they climb the first tetra-chord, when the full harmony suddenly reveals the majesty of the music. The little parenthetic duo at the eighth bar breaks the roll of the song for one breath, and the concord of voices closes in again like a diapason. One thinks of a bird-note making a waterfall listen.

“Harvest Home.”

Let us sing of the sheaves, when the summer is done,

And the garners are stored with the gifts of the sun.

Shouting home from the fields like the voice of the sea,

Let us join with the reapers in glad jubilee,—

Refrain.

Harvest home! (double rep.)

Let us chant His praise who has crowned our days

With bounty of the harvest home.

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Who hath ripened the fruits into golden and red?

Who hath grown in the valleys our treasures of bread,

That the owner might heap, and the stranger might glean

For the days when the cold of the winter is keen?

Harvest home!

Let us chant, etc.

For the smile of the sunshine, again and again,

For the dew on the garden, the showers on the plain,

For the year, with its hope and its promise that end,

Crowned with plenty and peace, let thanksgiving ascend,

Harvest home!

Let us chant, etc.

We shall gather a harvest of glory, we know,

From the furrows of life where in patience we sow.

Buried love in the field of the heart never dies,

And its seed scattered here will be sheaves in the skies,

Harvest home!

Let us chant, etc.

Thanksgiving Hymn. Boston, 1890. Theron Brown.

Tune “To the Work, To the Work.” W.H. Doane.

“The God of Harvest Praise.”

Written by James Montgomery in 1840, and published in the Evangelical Magazine as the Harvest Hymn for that year.

The God of harvest praise;

In loud thanksgiving raise

Heart, hand and voice.

The valleys smile and sing,

Forests and mountains sing,

The plains their tribute bring,

The streams rejoice.

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The God of harvest praise;

Hearts, hands and voices raise

With sweet accord;

From field to garner throng,

Bearing your sheaves along,

And in your harvest song

Bless ye the Lord.

Tune, “Dort”—Lowell Mason.

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Morning.

“Still, Still with Thee.”

These stanzas of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, with their poetic beauty and grateful religious spirit, have furnished an orison worthy of a place in all the hymn books. In feeling and in faith the hymn is a matin song for the world, supplying words and thoughts to any and every heart that worships.

Still, still with Thee, when purple morning breaketh,

When the bird waketh and the shadows flee;

Fairer than morning, lovelier than daylight,

Dawns the sweet consciousness, I am with Thee.

Alone with Thee, amid the mystic shadows

The solemn hush of nature newly born;

Alone with Thee, in breathless adoration,

In the calm dew and freshness of the morn.

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When sinks the soul, subdued by toil, to slumber,

Its closing eyes look up to Thee in prayer,

Sweet the repose beneath Thy wings o'ershadowing,

But sweeter still to wake and find Thee there.

The Tunes.

Barnby's “Windsor,” and “Stowe” by Charles H. Morse (1893)—both written to the words.

Mendelssohn's “Consolation” is a classic interpretation of the hymn, and finely impressive when skillfully sung, but simpler—and sweeter to the popular ear—is Mason's “Henley,” written to Mrs. Eslings'—

“Come unto me when shadows darkly gather.”

Evening Hymns.

John Keble's beautiful meditation—

Sun of my soul, Thou Saviour dear;

John Leland's—

The day is past and gone;

and Phebe Brown's—

I love to steal awhile away;

—have already been noticed. Bishop Doane's gentle and spiritual lines express nearly everything that a worshipping soul would include in a moment of evening thought. The first and last stanzas are the ones most commonly sung.

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Softly now the light of day

Fades upon my sight away:

Free from care, from labor free,

Lord I would commune with Thee.

Soon for me the light of day

Shall forever pass away;

Then, from sin and sorrow free,

Take me, Lord, to dwell with Thee.

The Tune.

Both Kozeluck and J.E. Gould, besides Louis M. Gottschalk and Dr. Henry John Gauntlett, have tried their skill in fitting music to this hymn, but only Gottschalk and Kozeluck approach the mood into which its quiet words charm a pious and reflective mind. Possibly its frequent association with “Holley,” composed by George Hews, may influence a hearer's judgement of other melodies but there is something in that tune that makes it cling to the hymn as if by instinctive kinship.

Others may have as much or more artistic music but “Holley” in its soft modulations seems to breathe the spirit of every word.

It was this tune to which a stranger recently heard a group of mill-girls singing Bishop Doane's verses. The lady, a well-known Christian worker, visited a certain factory, and the superintendent, after showing her through the building, opened a door into a long work-room, where the singing of the 546 / 484 girls delighted and surprised her. It was sunset, and their hymn was—

Softly now the light of day.

Several of the girls were Sunday-school teachers, who had encouraged others to sing at that hour, and it had become a habit.

“Has it made a difference?” the lady inquired.

“There is seldom any quarrelling or coarse joking among them now,” said the superintendent with a smile.

Dr. S.F. Smith's hymn of much the same tone and tenor—

Softly fades the twilight ray

Of the holy Sabbath day,

—is commonly sung to the tune of “Holley.”

George Hews, an American composer and piano-maker, was born in Massachusetts 1800, and died July 6, 1873. No intelligence of him or his work or former locality is at hand, beyond this brief note in Baptie, “He is believed to have followed his trade in Boston, and written music for some of Mason's earlier books.”