One of the temptations, in writing hymn texts, is to try too hard to be clever.

It’s easy to forget that the congregation is not singing the hymn in order to admire the skill of the hymnist; they are singing in order to worship the Lord, to remind themselves of important truths, and — for those who love music — for the sheer joy of raising their voices together.

Only rarely are the words of a hymn so exceptional, in one way or another, that we even care that the text had an author or a composer.  Hymns aren’t supposed to feel to us like someone else’s words — they’re supposed to feel to us, as we sing them, like the words of our own hearts.

So when the words become too clever or intricate in their patterns, the text gradually shifts from being a hymn to being something more appropriate for a choir to sing — more to be listened to by the congregation than to be sung.

This doesn’t mean that the text is a failure — quite the contrary!  But it does mean that if you wish to write words for a congregation to sing, you need to remember that simplicity is more desirable than dazzling originality.

Besides, originality that dazzles the writer is prone to be less than dazzling to others — even those who do value cleverness and intricacy!

Teaching Lessons in Hymns

Here is a hymn of mine in which I made some decisions that may have made the text unusable:

“The Word of Truth”
By Orson Scott Card

Who is wise?
The one who sees the world through Jesus' eyes,
Who loves the sinner but rejects the lies,
Who knows desire fades, the body dies,
Yet faith and love will live when we arise.
            The word of truth is sweet and clear.
            It guides the humble servant's hand.
            And when the truth is hard to hear
            The open heart will understand.

Who is right?
The one who loves the Lord with all his might,
With all his mind and strength, and in whose sight
All folk are neighbors, whom he will invite
To shed their sins and dwell within the light.
            The word of truth is sweet and clear.
            It guides the humble servant's hand.
            And when the truth is hard to hear
            The open heart will understand.

The purpose of “The Word of Truth” was to remember that knowing the truth does not mean we should lose compassion for those who don’t yet have the same understanding.  In a way, of course, the very writing of this hymn is the opposite of what the hymn purports to be about: I, the hymnist, am very sure that my understanding of tolerance is exactly how you should understand it.  The danger in such cases of circularity is, of course, smugness.

Then, to compound the potential for failure, I decided to use a single rhyme for each of the two stanzas.  This arose by accident.  The key choice was to begin each stanza with a simple line consisting of three accented syllables.

This is not a bad choice.  It invites the composer to create music that is surprising and unique.

But those short first lines give unusual emphasis to their end-words.  Wise and right have tremendous weight in their stanzas.  And so, as I wrote the lines that followed, I found myself searching for rhymes that would continue to echo those strong openings.

The result isn’t awful, but there are moments of awkwardness.  The word lies, for instance, is not an easy fit with the line “Who loves the sinner but rejects the lies.”  What lies?  Who is telling them?  Is lying the only sin being spoken of here?  Or are all sinners assumed to be liars?

I know what I meant — that we should love the sinner, but reject the lie that the sin is not a sin; in other words, to be tolerant does not mean that we have to pretend that there’s nothing wrong with sin.  But the verse doesn’t say that!  It’s too compressed; in pursuit of rhyme, I left a misinterpretable line.

That isn’t to say that the hymn can’t be used as is.  If, for instance, you heard a choir sing this, the word lies would pass quickly, and the ambiguity wouldn’t matter.  It’s when you are expected to sing the same words yourself, again and again, year after year, that it’s essential that the hymn be clear.

Perhaps the lesson is that it’s very, very hard to “teach a lesson” to the congregation in a hymn, and perhaps hymnwrights should devote their efforts to creating hymns that the whole congregation will immediately recognize as the thoughts of their own hearts.

Or perhaps the lesson is that when you decide to use a gimmick — five identical rhymes in a row, for instance — you have to be very careful not to lose the plain meaning of the hymn.

At least I had the sense to use easily-rhymed syllables like “ize” and “ite,” so the rhymes didn’t feel labored.

Hymns with a Plan

The next hymn isn’t trying to teach a lesson, and the “cleverness” is not so obvious.  But I still began it with a plan.  Each verse would be about a different holy place: The meetinghouse, the temple, and our home.

“Holy Places”
by Orson Scott Card

In this meetinghouse we sing,
Voices raised to praise our King.
Here we bow our heads to pray,
Help each other find the way.
            Make this house a holy place:
            Let us spend our Sabbath day
            In the Master's sweet embrace.

In God's holy house we kneel
Joined with his eternal seal.
Reaching out beyond the grave,
Let us share the gifts he gave,
            Serving in this holy place
            So our labors help to save
            Those who will accept His grace.

In the houses where we live,
Shelter, strength, and joy we give.
At our door let conflict end
As each other's needs we tend.
            Make our home a holy place
            Where each sweet familiar friend
            Gives a glimpse of Jesus' face.

The original plan works well enough: Paralleling our homes, the temple, and the meetinghouse is a good idea with some strong emotional content.  In the process, though, I got caught up in a “clever” rhyme scheme.

The verse seems simple enough: two rhyming couplets of exactly equal length.  But the simplicity disappears in the refrain.  The first and third lines of all three refrains rhyme with “place.”  This isn’t an inherently bad thing — after all, the idea of a “holy place” is what the hymn is about.  Besides, since all the refrains are different, it is the “place” rhymes that tie them together and separate them from the verse.

It doesn’t hurt a thing that the middle line of the refrain also happens to rhyme with the second couplet of the verse ... does it?

Not at all.  The harm comes from the fact that the refrain has only three lines, and none of them is easily repeatable to make it come out as a four.  That’s because the first line of the refrain is the clincher — the last two lines are merely an elaboration.

If you repeat either of the last two lines, it gives it undue weight and leads to awkwardness — they don’t stand alone, and repeated lines need to make sense by themselves.

And if you repeat the first line of the refrain, then the word place starts to feel pounded.  It’s such an abstract, neutral word, that to repeat it three times in the hymn is already pushing it; to make it six times would approach ugliness.

It’s possible that a very clever composer could find a way to make a seven-line hymn work musically without repeating any lines.

But the simplest solution is simply to remove all the refrains.  To see what I mean, go back and read the three four-line stanzas, but skip right over the three-line refrains.

It works, doesn’t it?  The hymn is immediately made simple, plain, and rather sweet.

Yet all my cleverness is wiped out in a stroke.  The hymn now follows one of the most common rhythm patterns in the hymnbook.  DA da DA da DA da DAH.  The rhyming is in couplets.

What do we miss, by deleting the refrains?  Ultimately, not a thing.  The concept is clear without the refrain; indeed, the repetition of the phrase “holy place” in the refrains makes the hymn less, not more, effective.

Yes, the refrain really needs to go.  With it, the hymn is more difficult and intricate and obvious.  Without it, the hymn is simple, plain, and ... subtle.

It’s as if the refrain were the place where the hymnwright walked up to the front of the chapel and interrupted the hymn to say, “Hey, folks, did you get it?  Did you get my meaning?”

(By the way, the original fourth line of the first stanza was “Teach each other to obey.”  But I changed it because it wasn’t doctrinally correct.  At church meetings, we teach each other about God’s desires for us, but it is the Holy Spirit and life itself — the choices that we make — that teach us obedience.)

Intricacy to the Point of Messiness

In poetry, it’s often good to separate rhymes more widely than in hymns.

I love heroic couplets, where the rhyming is AABBCCDD and so on.  Alexander Pope is one of my favorite poets, especially his “Essay on Man,” which includes, for instance, the famous couplet: “Know then thyself, presume not God to scan. / The proper study of mankind is Man.”

It’s no easy feat to write at great length with every pair of lines in perfect rhyme.  I know — I have a long poem called “Out of the Cage of Mirrors” that tries to use the same form, and it’s hard.

Because the pattern is so plain, it doesn’t feel clever.  It can become quite relentless.  So in poetry it can be quite effective to separate rhymes more widely.  But can it work in a hymn?

“The Prophets Often Sweetly Speak”
By Orson Scott Card

The prophets often sweetly speak
Of hope, of broken hearts reborn;
Sometimes of futures far more bleak,
If prideful hearts do not repent.
            In grief our dying Savior's head was bent;
            In joy he rose on resurrection morn.
            If we desire to see his loving face,
            Then brokenhearted first we seek his grace.

The world, pretending to be wise,
Denies the consequence of sin,
And those who profit from those lies
Call prophets cruel and pitiless.
            How did our Savior's suffering begin?
            He took the guilt of those he meant to bless.
            If we desire to see his loving face,
            Then brokenhearted first we seek his grace.

Not till we know that sin is death
Can we receive the Spirit's light;
Compassionate with every breath,
Our prophets call our sins by name.
            For us he plunged into the endless night
            To rescue every soul he could reclaim.
            If we desire to see his loving face,
            Then brokenhearted first we seek his grace.

When we arise, our bodies new,
And Jesus greets us as his own,
We'll know the prophets' words were true
And led us to our Father's throne.
            Within that holy place where searching ends,
            We'll meet our guides again and call them friends.
            With broken hearts now healed by Jesus' grace,
            And hand-in-hand with friends, we'll see his face.

The first three lines of each stanza seem to follow a familiar form.  The first two lines don’t rhyme, but the third line rhymes with the first line.  So ... we naturally expect that the fourth line will rhyme with the second, in the standard ABAB rhyme scheme.

Instead, the fourth line doesn’t rhyme with any of the lines that went before.  It feels wrong; it leaves the reader hanging, waiting for the other shoe (or rhyme) to drop.

Then we enter the refrain, and there we get a rhyme again — but it’s a rhyme with the last word of the verse.  It resolves that “wrong” word, but still leaves us dangling, waiting for a word that will rhyme with the second line of the verse.

Which finally comes in the second line of the refrain.  So the rhyme scheme is the unfamiliar ABACCB.

But the “cleverness” is compounded by a rhythmic game: The refrain, instead of being in the simple tetrameter of the verse, is suddenly in pentameter, the nonmusical five-foot line that is so brilliant in Shakespeare, but so awful for composers to work with.

Musically, then, the refrain will have to be markedly different from the stanzas, so even as the first two lines of each refrain resolve the rhymes, they create a new tension with the extra foot in each line.

Then the final couplet of the refrain, which is the same each time, drags the whole hymn down to failure.  Repetition of an excellent couplet might have felt exhilarating to sing, but “If we desire to see his loving face / Then brokenhearted first we seek his grace” is didactic, not emotional.  It does not move us, it merely reminds us, with an obvious rhyme and an overlong line, of what we already know.

Can this hymn be saved?

Yes — by jettisoning most, but not all, of the “cleverness.”

First, the refrain must be kept in a tetrameter line.  Get rid of that extra foot!

Second, eliminate the last couplet of the refrain completely.  It adds nothing to the hymn; the congregation would be sick of singing it long before they got through the whole song.

Third, get rid of the second verse entirely.  It’s negative, criticizing the world at large, and it includes awkward words that don’t feel right to sing, like pitiless and lies.

“The Prophets Often Sweetly Speak” (simplified version)
By Orson Scott Card

The prophets often sweetly speak
Of hope, of broken hearts reborn;
Sometimes of futures far more bleak,
If prideful hearts do not repent.
In grief our Savior's head was bent;
In joy he rose to greet the morn.

Not till we know that sin is death
Can we receive the Spirit's light;
Compassionate with every breath,
Our prophets call our sins by name.
For us they journey through the night
To find the souls they can reclaim.

When we arise, our bodies new,
And Jesus greets us as his own,
We'll know the prophets' words were true
And led us to our Father's throne:
That holy place where searching ends,
And prophets greet us all as friends.

Now we don’t have a refrain at all, do we?  Instead, we have three six-line stanzas.  They keep that intricate ABACCB rhyme scheme, but now each stanza ends with the resolution of that long-withheld B rhyme, providing a much stronger closure than the empty couplet ever did.

Notice, though, that the last stanza does not (and never did) retain the intricate rhyme scheme.  Instead of ABACCB, it’s a simple ABABCC.  That, too, provides closure, and ends the hymn on a simpler note.

It may not yet be perfect, but by eliminating most of the “cleverness,” it is obviously much improved.

Working Out the Plan

You have no idea how embarrassing this is — showing you hymns that I once was very proud of, but which now I realize don’t work.  It would be so much more pleasant to try to give you the illusion that I only write good hymns.  But you learn more from other writers’ errors than from their successes.

With all that I’ve already said, I imagine you’ll have no trouble at all figuring out why this one is a mess:

“The Plan”
By Orson Scott Card

Our Father gave us, by his grace,
This earth to be our dwelling place.
He set our hand
To till and tend,
And gave us hearing, speech, and sight
For lives of music, truth, and light.
            How we rejoiced when he told us his plan
            To give us our agency, woman and man!
            If we live as he taught, with joy we will meet face to  face.

Our children give us, as they grow,
A taste of God's work here below.
When, being free,
They disobey,
We grieve for all the grief they earn
And comfort them when they return.
            How we rejoiced when he told us his plan
            To give us our agency, woman and man!
            If we live as he taught, what joy every family will know!

Our Savior, having paid the cost,
Brings home the ones who once were lost.
The soul contrite,
The broken heart
Will hear of sweet forgiveness: "Nor
Do I condemn — go, sin no more."
            How we rejoiced when he told us his plan
            To give us our agency, woman and man!
            If we live as he taught, what joy when he gives us his trust!

Once again, there’s nothing wrong with the overall movement of the hymn.  It begins with the Lord giving us our mortal bodies and the chance to live on earth.  The second stanza is about the main work of our mortal lives, to rear children and learn to use our free agency wisely.  The final stanza is about the final gift of God, the sacrifice of the Savior so that we can be redeemed from the consequence of sins we repent of.

Why, then, is this hymn so long and unwieldy?

By now you already know.  First the refrain has got to go.  The repeating couplet isn’t bad, with the rhyme of “plan” and “man.”  It’s that shifting last line, which rhymes with the first couplet in each stanza, that wrecks it.  It’s too long, and it’s too “on the nose,” a little homily to make sure nobody could possibly miss the point of the hymn.  Read through the hymn just deleting those final lines and you’ll see how much improved it already is!

There is still some needless intricacy in the stanzas: That middle couplet with the slant rhyme should be cast as a single line that seems not to rhyme with anything.  The internal slant rhyme will still be there, however, so the line won’t feel as if it comes out of nowhere.

Finally, we need to work on the last couplet in the last verse.  The enjambment can’t be helped and shouldn’t be: Nor is the rhyme with more, so it has to be left dangling at the end of the penultimate line.  What needs fixing is the dash, followed by go, followed by a comma.  It puts too heavy a burden on the composer to come up with a melody that doesn’t clash with the phrasing of the words.

“The Plan” (improved version)
By Orson Scott Card

Our Father gave us, by his grace,
This earth to be our dwelling place.
He set our hand to till and tend,
And gave us hearing, speech, and sight
For lives of music, truth, and light.

Our children give us, as they grow,
A taste of God's work here below.
When, being free, they disobey,
We grieve for all the grief they earn
And comfort them when they return.

Our Savior, having paid the cost,
Brings home the ones who once were lost.
The soul contrite, the broken heart
Will hear of sweet forgiveness: "Nor
Do I condemn thee.  Sin no more."

Not all the intricacy is gone — it still has five-line stanzas, and because of the third stanza’s final couplet, the last line cannot be repeated.  So this hymn might end up with the strangeness that would come from being ten measures long.  But then, perhaps that would be a welcome change!

There is no rule that says intricacy and cleverness are bad.  But they’re dangerous; they impose extra burdens on the singers and on the composer.  A little intricacy goes a long way, and cleverness should never call attention to itself.

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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.

            This essay and the original hymn text are copyright © 2004 by Orson Scott Card.  Except as specified above, all rights reserved.