Hark! the Voice Eternal

John Julian, 1882

We’ve been having fun with language here at Word and Song, and one of the things I noticed as soon as I made my careful way through the first chapters of Genesis was that the sacred author was also caught up in delight. That first came home to me when I read what God said when he made the beast of the field, and “every creeping thing that creeps upon the ground,” which sounds a bit much, but not in Hebrew. In Hebrew, it’s delightful and immediately striking: ha-remesh ha-romesh: the first is the verbal noun, which we translate as “creeping thing,” and the second is the participle, which we have to turn into a clause with a verb, “that creeps.” It’s really every “creeper creeping,” but that in English is comical and wouldn’t work. Anyway, the next such play on words, and the poet in me says it’s not accidental, comes when God warns Adam against eating the fruit of the forbidden tree, because on the day he does so, moth tamuth: you shall die the death. That’s usually translated with an emphatic adverb: “You shall surely die.”

So I had to choose a hymn that plays with language, especially in the case of near-repetition. It’s easy to write a refrain. It’s a lot harder to write a refrain that’s not really a refrain, because it’s incorporated wholly into the stanza at its end, and because the words or their meanings are not quite the same from stanza to stanza. That’s a nifty kind of razzle-dazzle, the repetition with slight change, especially if you return in the final stanza, though in a differnt context, to precisely the same words as in the first stanza, coming around full circle, but not to the initial point of departure — instead to something far higher, more exalted. And this I’ve found, in John Julian’s brilliant hymn, “Hark! the Voice Eternal,” written specifically for the highly unusual meter of the 17th-century English march called “Prince Rupert.” In case you’re wondering, that’s the Prince Rupert of the Rhine, later named Duke of Cumberland, who was the young nephew of King Charles I, and who was his most brilliant general in Charles’ war against Oliver Cromwell and the New Model Army. Charles was always a bit too deferent to his courtiers, and Rupert was young, hotheaded, and frank in his evaluation of other people. If you were a fool, he would say so in public, and you could ruffle your aristocratic peacock feathers all day for all he cared. Unlike the hapless Charles, Rupert survived the war and ended up back in England when Charles II ascended the throne. Canadians ought to know him: he was one of the founders of the Hudson Bay Company.

The melody was named in his honor, in 1648 (Rupert was not yet 30 years old), and first appears in a Dutch book of melodies for flute or recorder, called Der Fluyten Lust-Hof, (A Pleasure-Garden for Flutes), compiled by Jacob van Eyck. He may have composed it himself — Rupert had spent much of his youth among the Dutch. Van Eyck was born blind, yet his book is still considered the greatest collection of melodies for woodwinds ever compiled. The author was a virtuoso at the recorder, and among other things, he’s given credit for inventing and casting the first modern carillon. How can a blind man give directions for the shaping of bells in the most precisely graduated sizes and shapes? I don’t know, but Van Eyck did. Then, in 1925, Gustav Holst, that English composer with the German name, arranged the melody for four-part choirs, and that’s what I’m looking at now in one of our hymnals.

Then there’s the author, John Julian. He was an Anglican priest, in what seems now like their golden age of scholarly and intellectual achievement. Julian’s greatest work was his Dictionary of Hymnology, a Herculean labor of love — 3,000,000 words; he corresponded with over 1,000 people who gave him leads as to lesser-known hymns, and not only in England but anywhere in the Christian world. Of course that meant he was fluent or conversant in many languages, ancient and modern. He consulted more than 10,000 manuscripts. And this of course was before the internet or the xerox machine. He had to hold and read them, or have somebody do that for him and transcribe accurately what was there. What comes across to me in his evaluation of hymns and their authors and composers, since I’ve often consulted him, is his generous appreciation of what was worthy, wherever he could find it, and also a careful critical sense, able to identify real sublimity. Julian also gave us other massive works of scholarship, including Carols, Ancient and Modern (1900).

When you read the text and listen to the melody, note that we’ve got near-repetitions both poetic and musical, all throughout. Musical lines thus echo each other, building to the march’s triumphant climax. But then, so do the poetic lines, both within each stanza and moving from one stanza to the next, till in the finale we sense that there can be no more: we have reached the ultimate in praice of Jesus, our Lord and Master. I will print the almost-refrain in italics.

Hark! the voice eternal,
   Robed in majesty,
Calling into being
   Earth and sea and sky;
Hark! in countless numbers
   All the angel throng
Hail creation's morning
   With one burst of song.
      High in regal glory,
         'Mid eternal light,
      Reign, O King immortal,
         Holy, infinite.

Bright the world and glorious,
   Calm both earth and sea,
Noble in its grandeur
   Stood man's purity;
Came the great transgression,
   Came the saddening fall,
Death and desolation
   Breathing over all.
      Still in regal glory,
         'Mid eternal light,
      Reigned the King immortal,
         Holy, infinite.

Long the nations waited,
   Through the troubled night,
Looking, longing, yearning
   For the promised light.
Prophets saw the morning
   Breaking far away,
Minstrels sang the splendor
   Of that opening day;
      While in regal glory,
         'Mid eternal light,
      Reigned the King immortal,
         Holy, infinite.

Brightly dawned the Advent
   Of the newborn King,
Joyously the watchers
   Heard the angels sing.
Sadly closed the evening
   Of his hallowed life,
As the noontide darkness
   Veiled the last dread strife.
      Lo! again in glory,
         'Mid eternal light,
      Reigns the King immortal,
         Holy, infinite.

Lo! again he cometh,
   Robed in clouds of light,
As the Judge eternal
   Armed with power and might.
Nations to his footstool
   Gathered then shall be;
Earth shall yield her treasures,
   And her dead, the sea.
      Till the trumpet soundeth
         'Mid eternal light,
      Reign, thou King immortal,
         Holy, infinite.

Jesus! Lord and Master,
   Prophet, Priest, and King,
To thy feet triumphant
   Hallowed praise we bring.
Thine the praise and weeping,
   Thine the victory;
Power and praise and honor
   Be, O Lord, to thee.
      High in regal glory,
         'Mid eternal light,
      Reign, O King immortal,
         Holy, infinite.

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Word & Song is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymn, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. To support this project, please join us as a free or paid subscriber.