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Practical Hymns
By Orson Scott Card
Mabel Jones Gabbott
was one of the great poets and hymnists in the LDS Church. It is
unfortunate that among the ordinary membership of the Church her
name is relatively unknown, but because she was not one of the heroic
pioneers of the Restoration like Eliza R. Snow and William Clayton,
and no grand stories attach to any of her hymns, she is more easily
overlooked.
But we do know and
love her hymns — and some of us well remember her poems.
When I was young,
my mother saw how my position in the family sometimes frustrated
me. I was four years younger than my older brother, and so I saw
him and my older sister get privileges I wanted but was not, in
my parents’ judgment, ready for. At the same time, my younger siblings
got special consideration because their needs were greater. Like
most middle children, I saw only the advantages that others had,
not the fact that to the older ones, I was one of the coddled youngsters,
and at the same time the younger ones were as envious of my privileges
as I was of those above me.
My mother found
a poem and typed it up and framed it for me. It was by Mabel Jones
Gabbott, and quoting as best I can from memory, it said:
The way will not
be always silk and song
For
you, my second son, the one in the middle.
Ahead
the first ones freely stride along,
And
those behind are sheltered, being little.
But in the middle
of the world are those
Whose
stride is tempered, those who cannot walk
Apart,
because the needs of others close
Upon them, to measure both their step and talk.
... the
way,
And
being limited, will learn to grow,
And
in the middle of the night to pray,
Perhaps,
and only you will come to know
The deep harmonious
tuning of life’s strings
That
being in the middle always brings.
I’m sorry that the
one line has utterly dropped from memory; that I cannot at this
moment lay hands on the framed poem (though I know where I thought
I had put it, and it is certainly somewhere in this overstuffed
house). No doubt there are errors in the parts I do remember.
But this is
one of the few poems I have memorized even to this degree. (The
words “tlot- tlot, tlot-tlot” from “The Highwayman” don’t
really add up to much.) And the poem stuck with me so well for
three reasons:
First, it came to
me as a gift from my mother, recognizing the frustrations of my
place in the family.
Second, it showed
me that a poet had actually thought of me — or someone like me —
and had taken the time to create a poem to comfort and inspire me.
Third, the poem
itself was marvelously well constructed, and as I came to know the
sonnet form and how difficult it is to compress any sort of complicated
thought into so few metered lines and apt words and phrases, I realized
that these seemingly simple and direct sentences were marvelously
constructed, far more powerful because of the semi-hidden rhythms
and rhymes.
There was once a
lively culture of LDS poetry, especially among women, who had the
Relief Society Magazine as a means of sharing their best
poems. My grandmother, Clara Horne Park, was published there from
time to time, and I remember my mother’s pride in her mother’s talents,
though my grandmother herself never spoke of this or any other talent
that she had — it would have seemed vain to her, I suppose.
It was an era in
LDS poetry that ignored the trends in the world outside, to the
benefit of our poetry, I must say, since directness of communication
has long been held in dispraise by the disciples of elitists and
obscurantists like T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. It was Robert Frost
who last, among those esteemed by the world to be great, mastered
and used both form and clarity. When that tradition faded away,
so did the love of the public for poetry.
The result is that
Gabbott, whose works should long since have been collected into
an important volume of LDS poetry, has been left to languish.
Except in our hymnbook,
where her “In Humility, Our Savior” is one of our favorite sacrament
hymns. Musically and lyrically, it may well be the most beautifully
appropriate of all our hymns for the task it was created for.
Oddly enough, though,
this is the one sacrament hymn that is usually too short. Since
we sing the hymns while the priests break the bread for the sacrament,
the hymn should be long enough to allow time for all the bread to
be broken. When the hymn does not last long enough, the organist
will usually keep repeating it until the job is done. But that
always feels as though something has gone wrong; it takes our minds
off repentance of our sins and the atonement of Christ.
Is it possible to
add another stanza?
The quick answer
is, no! What an outrageous idea! What Gabbott wrote was in fact
a standard four-stanza hymn text:
In humility, our
Savior,
Grant
thy Spirit here, we pray,
As
we bless the bread and water
In thy name this holy day.
Let me not forget,
O Savior,
Thou
didst bleed and die for me
When
thy heart was stilled and broken
On the cross at Calvary.
Fill our hearts
with sweet forgiving;
Teach
us tolerance and love.
Let
our prayers find access to thee
In thy holy courts above.
Then, when we
have proven worthy
Of
thy sacrifice divine,
Lord,
let us regain thy presence;
Let
thy glory round us shine.
Only when it was
combined with Rowland H. Prichard’s pre-existing music did the four
stanzas become only two. Since all the words are there, and the
hymn text is the standard length, the hymn should not run short.
Why does it?
The music and words
invite us to sing it at a conversational pace. Gabbott’s words
are never pompous; as with the sonnet of hers that my mother gave
me, her exquisite artfulness is so well-concealed that her words
seem as natural as ordinary speech — even with the perfectly parsed
second person singular of “Thou didst.”
The only conceivable
weakness of the hymn is when in the second stanza (as written),
she changes from first person plural to first person singular —
from “we pray” to “Let me not forget.” This was made necessary
when she decided to rhym “me” with “Calvary” — and there’s really
nothing wrong with such a minor inconsistency. Taking the sacrament
is at once a group rite and a completely private covenant.
Her hymn text is
complete, taking us from this shared ritual here in sacrament meeting,
through personal repentance, then a group prayer for the saints
to be united in love and prayer, and concluding with the promise
of exaltation in the presence of Christ.
What more could
possibly be added? And what hymnist would be reckless enough to
try to add something to Gabbott’s perfect text?
Me. But only if
you understand that I am not seeking to improve a perfect hymn;
I am only offering to improve an imperfect sacrament meeting experience.
An optional third stanza (or, technically, fifth and sixth), for when
the bread-breaking outlasts the hymn-singing.
Additional stanzas
by Orson Scott Card
At thy feet we
rest, O Savior.
Here
we listen to thy word,
Taught
by thy beloved servants:
Let
our lives show they were heard.
In thy house our
eyes are opened;
By
thy light we learn to see;
Rising
up, we find our burdens
Light,
for they are borne by thee.
Since Gabbott’s
original text takes us through our return to the presence of Christ,
what this additional stanza does is return us to the meeting where
we’re taking the sacrament. Still speaking to the Savior, we recognize
that we have gathered here to be taught by his appointed servants;
then we recognize that we are in the Savior’s house, what we are
taught is his gospel, and the true comfort we receive is the lightening
of our burdens when the Lord bears them for us.
Morning Songs
Sacrament hymns
are not just worshipful — they are also
practical. They must fulfill a role in our meetings, taking up
a certain amount of time and setting a contemplative, sober mood.
There are other
hymns that, for practical reasons, have nearly become unused in
our meetings, though once they were common and beloved. Why? Because
they speak of evening, the end of the day. In the old days,
when sacrament meetings often ended in the dark of night or the
dim light of dusk, it was appropriate to sing “Now the day is over,/
Night is drawing nigh;/ Shadows of the evening
/ Steal across the sky.”
It was also beloved
because it was so short. When a sacrament meeting had gone
long, these two brief stanzas could be sung in only a minute. We
loved this hymn.
But when sacrament
meeting not only doesn’t end the day, but doesn’t even end the overall
bloc of meetings, how can we possibly sing this hymn without its
becoming ridiculous?
So now we sing it
only at the end of firesides and such ... or in Alaska and northern
Scotland during the winter, when it’s dark no matter what time sacrament
meeting ends.
We also have morning
hymns, but they tend to have the bouncy, perky feeling that used
to mark Sunday school songs. Since Sunday school began as an auxiliary
service mainly for children — an extra meeting designed for teaching,
and which people attended only because of their enthusiasm for the
gospel — there was often a note of whipping up enthusiasm. These
were Sunday school pep songs: “Welcome, Welcome, Sabbath Morning!”
and “Come Away to the Sunday School” and “There Is Sunshine in My
Soul Today,” among others.
These bright morning
songs can still be sung (though “Come Away to the Sunday School”
must be astonishingly rare these days); but they are not really
sacrament meeting songs, are they?
It might be practical,
therefore, to have some hymns that reflect the actual time of day
when our meetings are likely to take place.
In This Chapel,
On This Morning
By Orson Scott Card
In this chapel,
on this morning,
Under
thy sweet care,
We
thy children gather, singing,
Offering
this prayer:
We confess our sin in sorrow;
Now repentance starts
Help us sin no more tomorrow;
Heal our broken hearts.
Kindle in us godly
fire,
Calm
us from our fear,
Free
us from our dark desire,
Make
our vision clear.
All our sins can be forgiven,
All our debts be paid
Through thy Son those gifts were given
Long before we prayed.
Jesus came as
to a marriage,
Bridegroom gracing wife.
From
his comfort we have courage,
From his dying, life.
From his pain comes exaltation:
That is why he came.
Father, make this congregation
Worthy of his name.
Technically, this
is a six-stanza hymn — the refrains are syllabically identical with
the verses. But each pair of stanzas makes a whole unit.
Moreover, the third
line of the verse stanzas is different from the third line of the
refrain stanzas. At the midpoint of the verse lines, the phrase
ends after the unstressed fourth syllable. But at the midpoint
of the refrain lines, the phrase ends at the end of the stressed
third syllable.
To compose music
that would work with both phrase patterns would be a needless challenge
to a composer. If the musical phrase fits the verse — “We thy children
/ gather, singing” — it would be hopelessly wrong with the stanza
— “Help us sin no / more tomorrow.” It needs to be phrased: “Help
us sin / no more tomorrow” — which wouldn’t work at all in the verse.
Where composers
will hate this hymn is in the rhyme of “fire” and “desire” in the
second stanza. We absolutely pronounce the written syllable “ire”
as if it were two syllables — we strongly palatalize the end of
the long I and the retroflex r becomes a syllable
of its own: “Fi-er.” But we can’t write it that way, because
the words “bier” and “tier” are pronounced quite differently.
So composers often
try to defy the way English is spoken and treat “fire” as if it
had only one syllable. Even in our most beloved anthem, many a choir
conductor insists that the poor choir embarrass themselves by singing
the line “The Spirit of God like a fire is burning” as if “fire”
had only one syllable — even though there are two notes available
for the word, and every other stanza offers two syllables for those
notes.
Of course, I hate
the whole business of eliding syllables anyway. “Heaven” is a two-syllable
word — though I once had a conductor ridiculously insist that a
choir sing the word as “heav’n” even when it was written
“heav-en” and there were two separate notes for the syllables.
The idea is to sing
words in the English language, not deform English to fit some arbitrary
idea of what our language would be if only we spoke it differently.
“Fire” has two syllables in English, and “desire” has three. They
are divided “fi-re” and “de-si-re.” Live with it.
Stretched over two
stanzas worth of music, this hymn might easily be too long. So
the third verse could be dropped. “Through thy Son those gifts
were given / Long before we prayed” is a very respectable ending
for the hymn. In fact, the third stanza, “Jesus came as to a marriage,”
seems almost as if we were starting an entirely new hymn, though
the last two lines of the refrain tie it back to the rest of the
hymn.
The usefulness of
this hymn comes from the fact that it is definitely a sacrament
meeting opening hymn, not a perky Sunday school song — but it speaks
of gathering together in the morning. It fits our most common worship
pattern.
Afternoon Hymns
The next hymn is
meant to serve another common need: The opening hymn for the early
afternoon sacrament meeting.
Sabbath Afternoon
By Orson Scott Card
On this Sabbath
afternoon
Praise
the God who holds us dear,
The
Savior who is coming soon,
The Spirit who is with us here.
As the meeting
hours flow
Let
our hearts and minds be clear,
So
by the Spirit we may know
The
truth within the words we hear.
As the trays of
bread are passed,
As
the water cups are blessed
Let
all our hearts be pure at last,
The
love within our lives expressed.
Sister, Brother,
in this place
Jesus
gives us equal part;
Until
I see the Savior's face,
By
loving you I know his heart.
Because of the references
to the sacrament in the third stanza, this might be taken as a sacrament
hymn — but that would be wrong. This hymn is not about the atonement,
it is about meeting together with fellow saints.
In fact, in the
fourth stanza the congregated saints sing to each other —
completely wrong for a sacrament hymn, but long overdue, I think,
for an opening hymn in a ward or branch of the Church.
After all, one of
the reasons we gather is to share the fellowship of the saints,
to buttress each other’s faith and obedience by showing that we
are not alone in our effort to live the gospel. And it’s not a
bad thing at all, I believe, for us to sing words of love to one
another. Isn’t that what Jesus commanded? “Love one another, as
I have loved you.”
One oddity in this
hymn will disappear when it is set to music. In reading the hymn,
the first two lines establish the pattern of beginning on a stressed
syllable; so when the third and fourth lines begin on an unstressed
syllable, it can make us stumble as we read. When singing it, however,
the music will clearly mark the stress without any effort at all
on the part of the congregation.
There’s another
issue, though, where I’m still ambivalent:
The Savior who
is coming soon,
The Spirit who is with us here.
Even though it is
clear and settled doctrine that the Holy Ghost is a person, not
a thing, we still tend to sing and speak of the Spirit without using
“who” pronouns. We are more comfortable singing “The Savior who
is coming soon, / The Spirit that is with us here.”
And I would have
written it that way, except that when we juxtapose those two phrases,
it seems to be making a point of the nonpersonhood of the Spirit,
which is doctrinally just plain wrong. So it’s a matter of the
difference between the comfort of familiarity and the discomfort
of correct but oft-ignored doctrine. I went with the doctrine on
this one.
Hymns Must Fit
It’s not enough
for a hymn text to be meaningful, truthful, apt, and well-constructed.
Nor is it enough for the music to be beautiful,
moving, or clever. They must also fit in some appropriate
niche in our worship services or there is no real point in including
them in a hymnal.
That is part of
the reason why many well-intended religious songs are not a regular
part of our musical experience in the Church. Songs like “A Prophet
Stood” and “O That I Were an Angel” are
beloved and familiar, but they would be awkward for congregational
singing.
Even “Love One Another,”
which is now in our hymnal, used to have an interlude with the words
“Now there were in that upper chamber / Jesus and his disciples
/ Come to take the supper of the Passover,” etc. I remember singing
that when it was a choir song, and I missed it when it moved into
the hymnal. But it would have been too complicated to annotate
properly. “For All the Saints,” with its weird order of verses,
is about as much complexity of organization as the average congregation
can bear.
Likewise, there
are hymns that are rarely used simply because they just aren’t right
for most church meetings. “If You Could Hie to Kolob,” with its
haunting minor key, is a musical favorite of a small minority of
saints; but what meeting, exactly, is right for such a reflective,
personal poem? It wasn’t really written to be a hymn, and makes
a poor fit with the needs of our worship services.
Someday, I imagine,
the longest hymn in the hymnbook — “I Believe in Christ,” which
is eight stanzas that only pretend to be four because the nearly-identical
music is simply repeated twice in a row — will someday be edited
down to a more-usable length.
Elder McConkie,
the writer of this hymn, was a great man of many gifts, but just
as becoming an apostle does not necessarily make one a qualified
brain surgeon or rocket scientist, so also does it not necessarily
imply that a heartfelt hymn by an apostle will necessarily be well-written.
Anyone who has actually worked at the art of hymn-writing will recognize
a nearly-complete array of beginners’ mistakes in “I Believe in
Christ,” beginning with the fact that the scattershot ideas make
no coherent point beyond the title.
Solecisms like “hath”
used solely to rhyme with “path,” when all the other verbs are expressed
in contemporary English (“sets,” not “setteth,” “stands,” not “standeth”);
awkward cliches inserted only to make a rhyme, like “my fondest
dream” and “so come what may”; and weird syntax like “on earth to
dwell his soul did come,” and “good works were his” — if anyone
but an apostle had written this hymn, it would not for a
moment have been considered for inclusion in the hymnbook without
serious reworking and editing.
Elder McConkie’s
life and testimony were important to us, but his hymn is not practical.
Included for sentimental reasons in the current hymnbook, I expect
it will eventually be shortened, dropped from the hymnbook, or simply
ignored by ward and stake leaders who don’t want to put the congregation
through the eight interminable, repetitive stanzas.
I know many people
consider it a favorite hymn. I suspect for many of them it is because
they loved Elder McConkie; for others, it may simply reflect the
simple, cliched, scattershot language of the ordinary testimony
meeting. It feels familiar because it is familiar. Those
who dread the hymn for its length, dullness of music, and awkwardness
of expression don’t dare speak up, for fear of being lambasted for
their “disrespect” for an apostle.
But to recognize
the actual quality of the hymn is not disrespect to an apostle,
whose life and works stand unassailable. It is respect for
the art of hymn-writing, which, when done well, enhances a vital
part of our worship.
Hymns don’t go into
the hymnal as a favor or out of sentiment alone: They must help
our meetings accomplish their purposes. Almost all hymn-writers
are sincere, their hymns heartfelt. Few, however, create something
worthy of being sung by every congregation in the church, year after
year.
Even a wonderful
poet and hymnist like Mabel Jones Gabbott only placed four hymns
in our book. And only one of her hymns is sung regularly in our
meetings.
It is no shame if
many sincere attempts at hymn writing are not included in the hymnbook
at all. I’ll be surprised if any of mine are ever included.
In the meantime, though, we owe it to the Lord, our fellow saints,
and our own self-respect to make sure that the hymns we create not
only uplift and inspire, but also fulfill the practical requirements
of our meetings.
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 © 2005 by Orson Scott Card.
Except as specified above, all rights reserved.
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