He Who Would Valiant Be

John Bunyan, 1684

If there’s one thing that any true pilgrim knows, it’s that the way isn’t strewn with roses. I don’t know, actually, whether we would want it to be so. And God, who is our desire, builds up the strength in us by endurance. That’s what the apostle Paul says. “We rejoice in our sufferings,” not despite them but in them, because “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint.” In our fallen condition, we need the discipline of adversity to firm up our spiritual muscles, not so that we will sweat and strain all our lives, but so that we may hasten on with all the greater speed and freedom, on to the object of our pilgrimage. We will have the heart for it.

That’s what John Bunyan had in mind for Mr. Great-Heart and Mr. Valiant-for-Truth, friends and guides for Christiana in the second part of Pilgrim’s Progress. For the enemy of man wants at all costs to discourage us from undertaking the pilgrimage. But if we do undertake it, he besets us not only with temptations and distractions, such as Vanity Fair, but with threats, with fear, and despondency, and loneliness. We must then give all our trust in the Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and believe his promises, and not swerve from the path. Mr. Valiant-for-Truth was so beset, as he tells Great-Heart, but because he believed in the truth, he pressed on.

And here we get one of the many short poems that adorn Bunyan’s work, a poem which later on was set to music, to be sung as a hymn in church. Its first line as Bunyan wrote it was “Who would true valor see,” but the editors of The English Hymnal (1906) revised it to make the application more of a personal challenge: “He who would valiant be.” That was in the days when such editors appreciated poetry and knew a great deal about it. Both versions are excellent — Bunyan’s original, and the adapted version from 1906. We’ll give them both, below, with Bunyan’s first. In either case, we’ve got good old fighting against wickedness and monsters, all to establish our right, as the final line says in each of the three stanzas, “to be a pilgrim.”

As for the melody for our Hymn of the Week, there are two that are splendid and martial, ST. DUNSTAN’S, and MONKS GATE. We prefer the second, though. It’s called MONKS GATE because that’s where the composer Ralph Vaughn Williams found it. He made a practice of combing the countryside of the British Isles, searching for folk melodies that he might then adapt for hymns, and in a little village called Monk’s Gate, near to the sea in West Sussex, he found an old navy war song, “Our Captain cried, ‘All hands!’,” and sure enough, it was perfect for this short poem — rousing, with a kind of vigorous masculine beauty.

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Bunyan's version:

Who would true valor see,
Let him come hither;
One here will constant be,
Come wind, come weather.
There's no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent,
To be a pilgrim.

Whoso beset him round
With dismal stories,
Do but themselves confound;
His strength the more is.
No lion can him fright;
He'll with a giant fight,
But he will have a right
To be a pilgrim.

Hobgoblin nor foul fiend
Can daunt his spirit;
He knows he at the end
Shall life inherit.
Then fancies fly away,
He'll fear not what men say,
He'll labor night and day
To be a pilgrim.

The 1906 version:

He who would valiant be
'Gainst all disaster,
Let him in constancy
Follow the Master.
There's no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent
To be a pilgrim.

Whoso beset him round
With dismal stories,
Do but themselves confound,
His strength the more is.
No foes shall stay his might,
Though he with giants fight;
He will make good his right
To be a pilgrim.

Since, Lord, thou dost defend
Us with thy Spirit,
We know we at the end
Shall life inherit.
Then fancies flee away!
I'll fear not what men say,
I'll labor night and day
To be a pilgrim.

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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.