Come Down, O Love Divine

Bianco da Siena (1350-1399)

As many of our friends here know, Debra and I are tremendous admirers of the work of Ralph Vaughan Williams, and not only of his work, but of a real humility and openness to beauty wherever he might find it. Vaughan Williams combed the British Isles in search of folk melodies, many of which had never been written down, and would otherwise probably have been lost forever. One of my favorite of those is Monks Gate, which Vaughan Williams arranged and applied to the vigorous and jaunty hymn He Who Would Valiant Be, which he transcribed on a winter’s day in 1904, when an elderly lady who loved the old folk songs sang it for him in the Sussex village of that name. That hymn was sung to his melody at Margaret Thatcher’s funeral in 2013, by the way. But Vaughan Williams also composed many of his own melodies specifically for already existing sacred poems. He did so with a quite remarkable insight into Scripture and what the hymns were supposed to mean, and the feelings they were to inspire in the singers, even though he said he was an agnostic. That might have been so; or it might have been his same natural humility at work. We must of course let God judge that.

Of all his hymns, our current Hymn of the Week seems to have been the one that meant most to him, as he composed an unusual and brilliant melody for it — and he had to, because the meter, 6-6-11-6-6-11, is the only instance of such that I can find in our many hymnals. He then named it for the village where he was born, Down Ampney. And when his ashes were interred at Westminster Cathedral, that was the hymn, and fittingly enough, since we pray in it that the Holy Spirit, that Love Divine, will descend upon us with his holy flame and reduce our earthly passions to “dust and ashes,” so that the flame of heavenly charity will burn hot and bright within us.

The hymn is a terrific translation of a sacred poem by Bianco da Siena, a fourteenth century Italian and member of an order called the Jesuates (not “Jesuits,” as those were founded in Spain by that soldierly Basque, Ignatius of Loyola, more than 150 years later). Bianco was a 17-year-old boy working as a wool carder in Siena when he felt the call to join the Jesuates, whose vocation was to poverty and humility. He lived in their order for the rest of his life, but he was endowed with real literary genius, which he devoted to writing sacred poems in praise of God: his Laudi. One of these, the 35th, is the source of our hymn, translated into English in the 19th century by the Reverend R. F. Littledale, a brilliant man in his own right. In the poem, Bianco calls upon the Holy Spirit, the holy Love, to come down into him and to burn, to burn with a thoroughly transforming fire. The Italian lines are precise and beautiful. Here’s the first stanza, so you can see what Littledale was looking at:

Discendi, amor santo,
visita la mia mente
del tuo amor ardente,
si che di te m'infiammi tutto quanto.

In English, “Descend, holy love, visit my mind with your burning love, so that I shall be wholly enkindled with you.” Traditional Italian poetry works with many forms I don’t see in other languages, and Bianco’s got one here. Each of his next 7 stanzas will have 7 short lines such as the first three above, followed by the long line to sum it all up at the end, and all those final lines will rhyme with “santo” and “quanto” above. That’s Banco’s way of linking all the stanzas together. It’s a common thing in Italian poetry — the final line that rhymes with nothing else in the stanza, but does rhyme with the final line in the stanza next to it. The translator Littledale renders the effect as best he can by having all his long lines end in the suffix -ing,

But above all that technical mastery, the poem simply burns with love, and Bianco says, rightly, that no human tongue can possibly find the words to describe it, until the Spirit himself makes the soul into his dwelling. Think, after all, of that miracle of Pentecost, with the tongues of fire descending upon the disciples, giving them not only the courage of ardent love, but the words with which to share it. Well that a poet should write those words, too!

We are fortunate to present today’s hymn recorded by the tremendous King’s College Choir.

Come down, O Love divine,
Seek thou this soul of mine,
And visit it with thine own ardor glowing;
O Comforter, draw near,
Within my heart appear,
And kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing.

O let it freely burn,
Till earthly passions turn
To dust and ashes in its heat consuming;
And let thy glorious light
Shine ever on my sight,
And clothe me round, the while my path illuming.

Let holy charity
Mine outward vesture be,
And lowliness become mine inner clothing;
True lowliness of heart,
Which takes the humbler part,
And o'er its own shortcomings weeps with loathing.

And so the yearning strong,
With which the soul will long,
Shall far outpass the power of human telling;
For none can guess its grace,
Till he become the place
Wherein the Holy Spirit makes his dwelling.

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