Hymn of the Week: May 24, 2021
Hymn of the Week: Come Down, O Love Divine
Glory to God #282
Pentecost Hymn
Text Bianca da Siena c.1367 Translated by Richard LIttledale 1867
Music Ralph Vaughan Williams 1906
Come Down, O Love Divine
Come down, O love divine,
seek thou this soul of mine,
and visit it with thine own ardor glowing;
O Comforter, draw near,
within my heart appear,
and kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing.
O let it freely burn,
till earthly passions turn
to dust and ashes in its heat consuming;
and let thy glorious light
shine ever on my sight,
and clothe me round, the while my path illuming.
And so the yearning strong,
with which the soul will long,
shall far outpass the power of human telling;
for none can guess its grace,
till Love create a place
wherein the Holy Spirit makes a dwelling.
“Come Down, O Love Divine” reflects the deep longing of the human heart for love. The text was written by Bianco da Siena, a 14th-century Italian monk, and draws upon the language of courtly love. This was the era when the feast of Saint Valentine first became associated with romance. The text was translated into English by the Anglican priest Richard Frederick Littledale, and finally set to music by Ralph Vaughan Wiliams in 1905. The tune, “Down Ampney” is named for the village where Vaughan Williams was born. At the bottom of this post are two good recordings.
The first verse invites, or even commands, “Love divine,” to descend upon the soul. Notice that Love is addressed with an “O,” an indication of direct address:
Come down, O Love divine,
seek thou this soul of mine,
and visit it with thine own ardor glowing;
O Comforter, draw near,
within my heart appear,
and kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing.
The medieval court celebrated the “ardor” of love, which over the centuries has developed into the modern celebration of romantic passion. In the hymn, however, the deeper inspiration for such love is the “Comforter,” which is the Holy Spirit. Here Bianco da Siena is making a connection between the “holy flame” of the Spirit at Pentecost (see Acts 2) and the fire of human love. It also recalls the theology of St. Augustine’s On the Trinity, which identifies the Holy Spirit as the love between the Father and the Son.
The second verse explores the experience of love, both as it burns, and as it burns out:
O let it freely burn,
till earthly passions turn
to dust and ashes in its heat consuming;
and let thy glorious light,
shine ever on my sight,
and clothe me round, the while my path illuming.
The fire of earthly love is deeply motivating, for good and for ill. This verse is so beautiful because it acknowledges both dynamics in the amorous turn, but also seeks to encompass it with the more constant light of the Spirit. “Shine ever on my sight,” we sing, seeking God’s constant love to come “round” us, whether our loves are in the first flower of youth or the embers of loss and age.
The final verse speaks to the great power of God’s constant love:
And so the yearning strong,
with which the soul will long,
shall far outpass the power of human telling;
for none can guess its grace,
till Love create a place
wherein the Holy Spirit makes a dwelling.
God’s love can put a deeper “yearning” in the heart, whose exploits escape even the romantic poetry of the court, or any other “human telling.” Indeed, no one would guess that men and women, even into their older years, would continue to burn with a passion for their God. But that greater “Love” has made himself “a place” in the human heart, a “dwelling” for the Spirit and the ultimate triumph of love (see Ephesians 3:14-19 and 1 Corinthians 3:10-17). This explanation comes to us from www.trinitylafayette.com
Enjoy the following recording. He uses the third verse that our hymnal doesn’t include but it is still a stirring interpretation of a stunning hymn with a centuries-old history.
