Hymns for Modern Times
Orson Scott Card  

Some things in this world never change. For instance, as far as I know there are no new sins — though each generation seems to think they invented their favorites.

Nor have the principles of righteousness changed, though we emphasize some more than others in different eras.

Much of our religion is changeless. Why, then, would we need new hymns?

Occasional Verse. One reason for a new hymn — or a new song, or a new poem — is to celebrate a particular event. Poets laureate usually have the job of coming up with verses to commemorate such thresholds.

Of course, such “occasional” verse (meaning verses for a particular occasion, not verses “from time to time”) is usually quite awful.

Imagine what might have been done in inept hands to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the entry of the pioneers into Salt Lake Valley: 

A hundred fifty years have passed
Since pioneers beheld the vale
Where Zion was restored at last:
The end of their historic trail. 

O Salt Lake City!
Beside the salty sea,
Where pioneers proved they were tough
And Brigham’s streets are wide enough
For me to park my SUV. 

All right, I gave up and got silly at the end.

The problem with occasional verse is that it’s so ... occasional. The moment comes, the moment goes; who’s going to sing it again?

That’s the problem Newell Dayley faced when he was asked to write the music for a new hymn commemorating the trek of the pioneers.

He and the person who was asked to write the words agreed that it would be better if the tune came first. There are sound reasons for this. When the words come first, the strong tendency is to write them in standard patterns of accents: da-DAH-da-DAH-da-DAH-da-DAH. (That’s a line of iambic tetrameter, for those who care.)

But the composer, unlimited by words, can break away from such patterns. There can be many notes between major accents, and then spots where several accented syllables come in a row.

Then the hymnist, searching for words that will fit, is forced to be resourceful, to find rhythmic patterns that depart from the norm. The results are often very good.

The problem is that the composer has to come up with music that will fit the tone and meaning of words that don’t yet exist!

So in working on the music, Dayley came up with a set of “placeholder” lyrics. This is a common practice among composers, so they have words to sing as they work through the tune. Often the words are quite silly and inappropriate — why shouldn’t they be, since no one is intended to hear them?

But in this case, Dayley took his placeholder lyrics seriously. Indeed, the fact that he wrote not one but three verses suggests that he got caught up in what he was writing — after all, for a placeholder you need only the verse and the chorus.

These were long lines — each one was in heptameter, seven feet long; but not really. Because Dayley was really writing in ballad stanzas. The line 

A marvelous work has begun to come forth among all the children of men. 

is really two lines: 

A marvelous work has begun to come forth
Among all the children of men. 

The giveaway is the single pickup syllable on “among” to lead off the second line. In each line, the first foot is an iamb — one unstressed syllable, then the stressed one — while all the others are anapests — two unstressed, one stressed.

But it hardly matters. I suspect that Dayley would have been uncomfortable with eight-line stanzas, while four-line stanzas — even with double-length lines — felt shorter and more manageable.

What matters is that his placeholder lyrics ended up doing exactly the job that the best occasional verses do.

Instead of tying it to the event of the sesquicentennial — “A hundred fifty years have passed” — he merely reminds us of the original event that we were commemorating.

Not only that, but he doesn’t begin it with reference to the pioneers. He starts with a reference to the restoration of the gospel — which, when you think about it, is absolutely right. Those Mormon pioneers had no intention of being pioneers. That role was forced on them because of the persecution that followed believers in the restored gospel.

The first stanza, thus, promises us a hymn of the Restoration. Then the second verse — “Those marvelous Saints ...” refers to the early pioneers. But wait! At no point does the hymn specifically mention anything about pioneers. No wagons, no trek west, no crossing rivers. Merely the fact that they came from and shared the gospel in lands far and near, and then the fact that they sacrificed and stood as examples.

And the third verse is a call to action for present-day Saints, asking us to join in the same service as those early members of the Church.

Only the chorus, then, speaks of any kind of pioneer trek at all: “With faith in ev’ry footstep.” And even then, where are we walking? “We follow Christ, the Lord.” Nothing about going to Salt Lake City — our faithful footsteps are in obedience to Jesus’ call for us to “come follow me.”

This is how it’s done. When we performed this song during the sesquicentennial, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that we were singing about our pioneer forebears. We were moved by memory of them.

Yet now, years later, we can sing this hymn without any particular thought of the pioneers and it still works.

No wonder that the assigned lyricist, seeing what Dayley’s placeholder lyrics achieved, insisted that there was no reason to replace them with a different text.

How was this magical trick pulled off? It followed one simply principle: Be vague. 

Vague Is the Vogue

I know, that’s often something we’re told to avoid in “good writing.” But in the world of hymnody, good writing often requires vagueness. If you get too specific, it can easily stop sounding like a hymn.

The idea is that any specific details must sound metaphorical. “Abide With Me, ’Tis Eventide” refers to taking a walk, but it may not be a literal walk. One can take it to refer to any conversation with the Lord, such as a prayer — or any experience that brings one closer to the Lord.

A poem about a walk might have included details — a twig, a branch brushed aside, a bee among wildflowers. But in the hymn, such specificity would have been a distraction. And singing about such things would feel wrong to a congregation ... unhymnlike!

Hymns need to have a timeless feel to them, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t have at least a few hymns that reflect problems and attitudes we face in the world today.

No, I’m not calling for hymns that specifically condemn pornography or drugs. Bad enough that we still have the wince-inducing line “tea and coffee and tobacco they despise” in the song (not really a hymn) “In Our Lovely Deseret.”

In a way, that overspecific song falls in the category of “songs that are awful because they were written for children.”

Somehow people think that because they’re writing a song for children or teenagers to sing, they can go ahead and write explicit, embarrassing lyrics. 

We are Mormon adolescents
We don’t let our pants hang down
Or show off our body’s essence
When we wander through the town. 

No, I think we’re not going to get that one to be popular with our teenagers. Except, perhaps, as a joke. 

Modern Experience

Still, when writing “Abide With Me, ’Tis Eventide,” the hymner was able to draw on taking a walk at evening for his metaphor. Why can’t we also draw on airplane flight? Why can’t our hymns refer to the discoveries of modern science, which can sometimes be used by those who wish to try our faith?

It was with that thought in mind that I wrote this hymn: 

“Seeking Wisdom”
By Orson Scott Card 

When over clouds we speed and soar,
How wide to us our vision seems;
But thy swift Spirit moved before,
And saw much farther than our dreams. 

When from the ancient soil we raise
A relic of the unknown past,
We guess but do not know thy ways,
Or where thy making leads at last. 

When in the holy writ we look
Or on our knees we speak with thee,
Then truth can be an open book
And by thy light our eyes will see. 

Notice that I still follow the principle of vagueness. No mention of jets or rockets or hot air balloons — but it is within the realm of possibility for us to speed and soar over clouds, and even those who don’t fly have experienced flight in movies or tv shows, or have seen aerial photos. The image will speak to almost everyone today — but would have sounded absurd in the time of Wilford Woodruff.

(Note also the phrase “swift spirit.” If the notes of the melody assigned to these words are fairly long, the phrase is singable. But if the notes are brief, then the words would need to be “quick spirit,” which gets rid of the “ftsp” combination at the center of the original phrase.)

In the second stanza, I refer to things we dig up from the ground. It might be archaeological relics; it might be dinosaur bones; it might be the bones of species that are genetically close to modern humans. This hymn doesn’t take any kind of stand for or against evolution, knowing that some Mormons believe that it didn’t happen, while others have no problem with reconciling evolution with the Genesis and Moses and Abraham accounts of creation.

Notice, though, that in both stanzas the “we” refers, not to Latter-day Saints, but to “modern humans,” because in fact Mormons do know, or at least have some idea, of “where thy making leads at last.” But not a full idea, certainly.

It’s the third verse that makes the real point: What we modern humans think or imagine or “know” based on our modern technology and the findings of modern science is, in fact, not superior to what we learn through scripture and revelation. The hymn affirms that it is through the Lord that we learn the ultimate why of things — the purpose underlying and preceding all creation.

It’s a hymn that I think we need. And yet I have been very careful to make the words vague enough that they won’t be embarrassing to sing. In a poem I could very easily have said, “When Leakey found an ancient skull / and named it Lucy, called it kin,” and there would have been nothing wrong with it.

But the mere thought of asking a congregation of Mormons to sing those words would be appalling. 

A Prayer for Zion

Here’s another modern hymn. This one deals with modern concerns that echo ancient ones. The scriptures call for us to be kind to the poor — from Enoch’s time onward. Genesis urged humankind to multiply — and to “replenish the earth,” long before there was an environmental movement.

We are looking to create a Zion society, a people who are ready for the Savior when he comes again. Brigham Young and, echoing him, Hugh Nibley have pointed out that part of our responsibility is to live consecrated lives and clean up what we can of the damage humans have done through sheer carelessness. If the earth is restored to its paradisaical glory, might it not be partly through our own efforts?

And yet ... if I used the specific language of the Environmentalist movement, it would feel creepy to sing it in church, especially since for many people Environmentalism has become a competing religion. So ... vagueness makes the point without making it feel too “on the nose” or “outside the faith.” 

“A Prayer for Zion”
By Orson Scott Card 

When Jesus comes to Earth again,
Let us be Zion for him then,
Pure of heart, at peace, at one,
To welcome home the Son:

A people who are rich indeed,
And yet are innocent of pride,
For no one takes more than his need,
And no one, needing, is denied. 

When Jesus comes ... the Son:
A people who together mend
All harm to sky and sea and land,
For Earth was given us to tend,
And it will bloom beneath our hand. 

When Jesus comes ... the Son:
A people who are sanctified,
Whose children grow untouched by sin,
Whose temple doors are standing wide,
For all are worthy to come in. 

Note that there’s an oddity to this hymn’s structure: The chorus comes first. And it can’t be moved to the end of each stanza, because the chorus ends with a colon, and the stanza consists of an explanation of how we can become Zion, in order to be ready for Christ’s coming.

This may make the hymn too weird for us to sing in church. Or we may simply get used to it, like the one-of-a-kind fanfare at the beginning of “God of Our Fathers.”

I believe we need new hymns that refer to our modern experiences and concerns. After all, our religion encompasses every aspect of life, and God measures us as a people by how we fulfil all our responsibilities. We can write modern hymns that still feel timeless. Whether these two of mine do the job properly is for others to decide. 

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Post your comments — but not your own hymn texts, unless you wish to surrender copyright! — here on Meridian. And don’t send hymn texts to me! I’m not a music publisher.

However, if you’re a composer and wish to set one of my hymns to music, don’t ask for my permission first. I hereby grant you permission to use my hymn text free of charge in your own musical setting, as long as you don’t publish or sell the result.

In other words, you can perform your hymn as much as you want. But the moment you want to publish it or record it or charge for it, then we need to talk — I’ll need to hear your hymn and decide if I approve of it before you can publish, record, or charge for the combined work. I can be reached at http://www.nauvoo.com or http://www.hatrack.com.

And if I deny permission, then you can simply write your own words to fit the music you wrote. You won’t lose a thing.