Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is the last, for now, in the series of evening ones: ‘We praise you Father for your gift’. It is attributed not to an individual but to St Mary’s Abbey, West Malling (Kent). The tune (Gonfalon Royal) is not written for it, and we’ve used it twice already this year (see 7 March and 5 April).
In the first verse we praise God for dusk and nightfall. Why? Because they ‘foreshadow the mystery of death that leads to endless day’. The assumption we have as we go to sleep that whether our dreams be good or bad we will awaken in the morning, should also be the assumption we have at the end of life that whatever experiences lie beyond it, we will be received into a new life with Christ.
The second verse is more earthbound. We ask for quiet sleep to renew strength, gain looking ahead to morning when may wake in the love of God. The third and final verse of this short hymn asks that we may seek God’s glory in rest as well as in activity – a reminder to us who are naturally active that rest and sleep are an important part of life.
I found this a frustrating hymn to sing, mainly because the lack of rhyme seems unduly perverse – it is so easily mended that one wonders if the authors had deliberately tried to ignore artistry in their work. Maybe the hymn was written in one of those “write a hymn in a single workshop” courses that people put on as part of a “Christian Arts” day, and then never was tidied up by reflection before being published?
At all events, my technique of singing and playing a hymn at the same time requires me to read a line of text at a glance and sing it out of my memory (while looking back at the music), and I need the rhyme to make sense for that to happen. So I took the liberty of rearranging the words so that they did that.
I think of the tune “Gonfalon Royal” as being for a rousing hymn, not at all the gentle mood of this one. It does, however, at least make sense of the “Amen” at the end.