Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is ‘O child of promise, come’ by James Quinn. It continues the Advent theme of calling on Christ to come and restore all things. The titles for Christ seem to be taken mainly if not entirely from the book of Isaiah that is widely used in Advent: Emmanuel, Prince of Peace, the Lord’s Servant, light to the gentiles, anointed one, Messiah; as are other phrases such as ‘Good tidings to the poor announce, proclaim God’s year of grace’ (v.3)
Two tunes are offered, neither of which was familiar, but both quite singable and broadly in the same style, though one is from the 18th century and one from the 19th. John chose to use the latter (‘Venice’).
At a Hymn Society conference a few years ago I heard a talk about James Quinn and a project to collect together his hymns and issue them in a compendium. He is (was) a Roman Catholic writer with (it seems to me) a determined aim of setting out pieces of doctrine and liturgy in a systematic and rather pedestrian manner, in which clarity (as opposed to beauty) would be the main aim. Although some of his hymns are quite partisan in their Roman overtones, on the whole I think he succeeds quite well in this aim, and this is one such hymn.
As such, I think the phraseology occasionally sounds a bit wooden. The word “come” goes on the front or at the end of the line simply to fit the meter: no attempt is made to say “O come, O promised child” or “O come, Lord’s Servant true” in v1 & v2, to match “O come Anointed One” and “O come Messiah, King” in v3 & v4 – because, to James, there’s a big difference in meanings between “promised child” and “child of promise” and accuracy can’t be sacrificed to meter. This produces some odd effects: I don’t feel the “come” in verse 2 really works as the vocative it is supposed to be: it is too easy to construe it as an indicative. Nor does “to show blind eyes your face” ring true as an alternative “to open blinded eyes”. Nor does “delight – light” really work as a perfect rhyme (a perfect rhyme has everything identical from the last stressed vowel to the end, but the consonants before this vowel have to be different: so “light” rhymes with “might” “fight” and “right” but not with “delight” or “limelight” or “acolyte”). I picture James Quinn as a man with a strong streak of perfectionism, and I’d guess he was dissatisfied with these lines too?
About the tunes, “Venice” (the 19th century one) was used regularly at St Peter’s Ashton-u-Lyne when I was a child there, although I can’t remember which hymn it was used for. But a tune like Carlisle would have worked just as well.