Some of our readers may remember the old “Chiller Theater” intro they used to feature on WPIX, channel 11 in New York City: it was a drawing of a reddish swamp with a dead tree nearby, and a hand disappearing into the water below — a hand with six fingers. The voice groaned, “Chil-LER,” to scare little kids just as they wanted to be scared, because why else would you be watching a horror movie? Complete the rest of that swampy scene in your imagination: half-dead trees hung with nightshade, stagnant water smelling of rotten wood and mud, suspicious mushrooms puckering out of the peat, nothing better than half-alive — is that a garden? Does it become one just by our saying so?
A garden has to be tended. And that’s what the author of our Hymn of the Week, that sweet and gentle titan of sacred poetry and hymnody, Isaac Watts, calls to our attention. The typical move for the hymnodist is to conceive of Heaven as a Paradise, a garden of beauty and joy. That’s got plenty of Scriptural warrant, and you will find it everywhere in Christian iconography. What’s not so typical, but what might be good for us to consider, is that the garden to be tended is the human soul. Each one of us is to be a garden, or, to make the metaphor more precise, a tree in that garden. Each one of us is to bring forth fruits. We do so not by our own independent power, but by submitting to be tended by the grace of God. And the fruits are real, and are what they are regardless of what anybody might want to think of them. Peaches and pears are not toadstools. A lilac bush is not stinkweed. It doesn’t matter what you call them.
Today’s hymn comes in a variety of versions, as it appears that Watts revised it at least once, and I have seen the last four stanzas of eight, bracketed, as if to suggest that the additional stanzas were not Watts’ own. In any case, I will give the hymn in four stanzas, which appear to have been written by Watts and not jiggered or tinkered with by any editors. The hymn is actually a single continued metaphor. Trees bring forth fruit, and we are the trees Christ has planted. They also bring forth spice — and I guess here we’ve got something that you can’t imagine by drawing on your own experience, if you live where we do in the United States, not in spicy India, with trees whose bark breathe cinnamon or cassia, or whose ripened berries smell of nutmeg, or allspice, or any of those wonderful spices that, pound for pound, were once more valuable than gold, and that set the Portuguese in their ships to round the Cape of Good Hope in their quest for a route to India unencumbered by Muslim sultans and janizaries. The scents, the perfumes, are like breaths of praise sent up to the Creator. We are to become like such trees and shrubs — from grace engrafted in our souls.
I find the poem remarkably tender and wise. Isaac Watts, as I’ve mentioned before, was something of a boy prodigy, writing pretty good poetry when he was just seven years old. Some hymns catch on, and some don’t, but, as I have also mentioned, that doesn’t necessary imply anything about their quality as poetry. This hymn here is what I call a forgotten gem, in that way much like the most unusual and deeply moving Passtiontide hymn I have ever found, The Story of the Cross. Its message is not, “Take me as I am,” but “Make me as you will.”
We could not find today’s hymn sung with the tune above, the lovely Leighton, so we have attached a simple video of tune and sheetmusic only.
Christ hath a garden walled around, A Paradise of fruitful ground, Chosen by love and fenced by grace From out the world's wide wilderness. Like trees of spice His servants stand, There planted by His mighty hand; By Eden's gracious streams, that flow To feed their beauty where they grow. Awake, O wind of heav'n, and bear Their sweetest perfume through the air: Stir up, O south, the boughs that bloom, Till the beloved Master come. That He may come, and linger yet Among the trees that He hath set; That He may evermore be seen To walk among the springing green.
Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and access to our full archive and to comments and discussions. We value all of our subscribers, and we thank you for reading Word and Song!
A very comforting and peaceful hymn!
I’m reminded of a carol often sung during Advent, “King Jesus hath a garden full of wondrous flowers.”