"We Sing Of Golden Mornings": Hymn of the Month for March, 2007

Our featured hymn this month is #44: "We Sing of Golden Mornings." The words are loosely based on a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The World Soul" (1847), as rewritten first by Walter Walsh, then recast by Vincent Silliman in 1955 for the UU hymnal We Sing of Life, and finally recast once again in 1990 for our current hymnal, thusly:

We sing of golden mornings, we sing of sparkling seas,
of prairies, valleys, mountains, and stately forest trees.
We sing of flashing sunshine and life-bestowing rain,
of birds among the branches, and springtime come again.

We sing the heart courageous, the youthful, eager mind;
we sing of hopes undaunted, of friendly ways and kind.
We sing the roses waiting beneath the deep-piled snows;
we sing the earth's great splendor, whose beauty around us glows.

The only line changed in the 1990 arrangement from Silliman's work was his closing line:

We sing, when night is darkest, the day's returning glow.

Emerson's original poem, for the record (via http://rwe.org) (I don't know...I don't really see the derivation. Am I blind?):

Thanks to the morning light,
Thanks to the seething sea,
To the uplands of New Hampshire,
To the green-haired forest free;
Thanks to each man of courage,
To the maids of holy mind,
To the boy with his games undaunted,
Who never looks behind.

Cities of proud hotels,
Houses of rich and great,
Vice nestles in your chambers,
Beneath your roofs of slate.
It cannot conquer folly,
Time-and-space-conquering steam,—
And the light-outspeeding telegraph
Bears nothing on its beam.

The politics are base,
The letters do not cheer,
And 'tis far in the deeps of history—
The voice that speaketh clear.
Trade and the streets ensnare us,
Our bodies are weak and worn,
We plot and corrupt each other,
And we despoil the unborn.

Yet there in the parlor sits
Some figure of noble guise,
Our angel in a stranger's form,
Or woman's pleading eyes;
Or only a flashing sunbeam
In at the window pane;
Or music pours on mortals
Its beautiful disdain.

The inevitable morning
Finds them who in cellars be,
And be sure the all-loving Nature
Will smile in a factory.
Yon ridge of purple landscape,
Yon sky between the walls,
Hold all the hidden wonders
In scanty intervals.

Alas, the sprite that haunts us
Deceives our rash desire,
It whispers of the glorious gods,
And leaves us in the mire:
We cannot learn the cipher
That's writ upon our cell,
Stars help us by a mystery
Which we could never spell.

If but one hero knew it,
The world would blush in flame,
The sage, till he hit the secret,
Would hang his head for shame.
But our brothers have not read it,
Not one has found the key,
And henceforth we are comforted,
We are but such as they.

Still, still the secret presses,
The nearing clouds draw down,
The crimson morning flames into
The fopperies of the town.
Within, without, the idle earth
Stars weave eternal rings,

The sun himself shines heartily,
And shares the joy he brings.

And what if trade sow cities
Like shells along the shore,
And thatch with towns the prairie broad
With railways ironed o'er;—
They are but sailing foambells
Along Thought's causing stream,
And take their shape and Sun-color
From him that sends the dream.

For destiny does not like
To yield to men the helm,
And shoots his thought by hidden nerves
Throughout the solid realm.
The patient Dæmon sits
With roses and a shroud,
He has his way, and deals his gifts—
But ours is not allowed.

He is no churl or trifler,
And his viceroy is none,
Love-without-weakness,
Of genius sire and son;

And his will is not thwarted,—
The seeds of land and sea
Are the atoms of his body bright,
And his behest obey.

He serveth the servant,
The brave he loves amain,
He kills the cripple and the sick,
And straight begins again;
For gods delight in gods,
And thrust the weak aside;
To him who scorns their charities,
Their arms fly open wide.

When the old world is sterile,
And the ages are effete,
He will from wrecks and sediment
The fairer world complete.
He forbids to despair,
His cheeks mantle with mirth,
And the unimagined good of men
Is yeaning at the birth.

Spring still makes spring in the mind,
When sixty years are told;

Love wakes anew this throbbing heart,
And we are never old.
Over the winter glaciers,
I see the summer glow,
And through the wild-piled snowdrift
The warm rose buds below.

In his essay about our hymnals delivered at General Assembly in 1977, Silliman writes:

“We sing of golden mornings” is another hymn of complex history. While We Sing [of Life] was in preparation, Edwin H. Wilson, Unitarian minister and Humanist leader, wrote that he could send me a batch of material he had collected through the years in which I might find things of use, if only I would do all the sorting out. The pile was nearly a foot high. In it was a tiny hymnbook of English origin, compiled in 1925, called Free Religious Hymns. I thought one text in it had possibilities; although it was mostly doggerel, it had some bright phrases. It was attributed to “Emerson.” It didn’t sound like Ralph Waldo Emerson to me; I didn’t trouble to look it up in Emerson; but I did shape a hymn text from it. The tune to which we sing it was chosen by Irving Lowens. After this hymn was accepted for Hymns for the Celebration [of Life], I thought I’d better check that Emerson attribution. Then I discovered that the text I had worked with was indeed based on Emerson. I trust that my rewrite still constitutes a better hymn.

The hymn's tune is attributed to William Walker's Southern Harmony, dating from 1835, and is entitled, quite wonderfully, "Complainer." Hmmmm. Wonder what that's about? Here's the original lyric:

I am a great complainer, that bears the name of Christ;
Come, all ye Zion mourners, and listen to my cries:
I've many sore temptations, and sorrows to my soul;
I feel my faith declining, and my affections cold.

O Lord of life and glory, my sins to me reveal,
And by thy love and power, my sin sick soul be healed;
I thought my warfare over, no trouble I should see;
But now I'm like the lonely dove, that mourns on the wavering tree.

I wish it was with me now, as in the days of old,
When the glorious light of Jesus was flowing in my soul;
But now I am distressed, and no relief can find,
With a hard deceitful heart, and a wretched wandering mind.

It is great pride and passion, beset me on my way,
So I am filled with folly, and so neglect to pray;
While others run rejoicing, and seem to lose no time,
I am so weak I stumble, and so I'm left behind.

I read that peace and happiness meet Christians in their way,
That bear their cross with meekness, and don't neglect to pray
But I, a thousand objects beset me in my way
So I am filled with folly, and so neglect to pray.