Music for the Third Sunday after Epiphany, January 23 2022
Let Us with a Gladsome Mind – Text: Psalm 136, abbrev.; para. John Milton (1608-1764) / Music: Melody from John Antes (1740-1811); harm. John B. Wilkes (1785-1869).
View the video here
In 1623, at the age of 15, John Milton wrote a paraphrase of Psalm 136, the text of which is this Sunday’s entrance hymn in church (Let Us with a Gladsome Mind). It was not published until 1645 in Poems by Mr. John Milton. Both English and Latin. Compos’d at Several Times. It originally consisted of 24 stanzas, from which centos of two to eleven stanzas have been printed in well over 80 hymnals in the 20th and 21st centuries alone. Over the years Milton wrote a total of nineteen Psalm paraphrases, and in so doing bequeathed to all succeeding hymnodists a dignity and stateliness of expression, a loftiness of thought and a grandeur of simplicity that in many ways set a new course for lyrical beauty.
The tune Monkland is an arrangement by John Wilkes of a tune by John Antes. It is found in the latter’s A Collection of Hymn Tunes chiefly composed for private amusement. Antes was an American, born in Pennsylvania, who was active for most his adult life in the Moravian movement. John Wilkes was organist at Monkland, England – hence the name of the tune – and arranged Antes’ tune for this hymn, which appeared in Hymns Ancient & Modern 1861.
Let us, with a gladsome mind,
Praise the Lord, for he is kind:
For his mercies ay endure,
Ever faithful, ever sure.
Let us blaze his name abroad,
For of gods he is the God:
For his mercies ay endure,
Ever faithful, ever sure.
He with all-commanding might
Filled the new-made world with light:
For his mercies ay endure,
Ever faithful, ever sure.
He the golden-tressèd sun
Caused all day his course to run:
For his mercies ay endure,
Ever faithful, ever sure.
And the horned moon by night,
Mid her spangled sisters bright:
For his mercies ay endure,
Ever faithful, ever sure.
All things living he doth feed,
His full hand supplies their need:
For his mercies ay endure,
Ever faithful, ever sure.
Let us, with a gladsome mind,
Praise the Lord, for he is kind:
For his mercies ay endure,
Ever faithful, ever sure.
Gerald Harder
