Hymn of the Week: March 7, 2025
O Wondrous Sight, O Vision Fair
Glory to God: 189
TEXT: Latin 15th Century, John Mason Neale, 1851
MUSIC: The Agincourt Song
O wondrous sight, O vision fair
Of glory that the church shall share,
Which Christ upon the mountain shows,
Where brighter than the sun he glows!
From age to age the tale declare,
How with the three disciples there,
Where Moses and Elijah meet,
The Lord holds converse high and sweet.
The law and prophets there have place,
Two chosen witnesses of grace;
The Father's voice from out the cloud
Proclaims his only Son aloud.
With shining face and bright array
Christ deigns to manifest today
What glory shall be theirs above
Who joy in God with perfect love.
And faithful hearts are raised on high
By this great vision's mystery,
For which in joyful strains we raise
The voice of prayer, the hymn of praise.
The following comes from the informative website: www.hymnary.org
John M. Neale's life is a study in contrasts:
Born into an evangelical home, he had sympathies toward Rome; in perpetual ill health, he was incredibly productive; of scholarly temperament, he devoted much time to improving social conditions in his area; often ignored or despised by his contemporaries, he is lauded today for his contributions to the church and hymnody. Neale's gifts came to expression early—he won the Seatonian prize for religious poetry eleven times while a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, England. He was ordained in the Church of England in 1842, but ill health and his strong support of the Oxford Movement kept him from ordinary parish ministry. So Neale spent the years between 1846 and 1866 as a warden of Sackville College in East Grinstead, a retirement home for poor men. There he served the men faithfully and expanded Sackville's ministry to indigent women and orphans. He also founded the Sisterhood of St. Margaret, which became one of the finest English training orders for nurses.
Laboring in relative obscurity, Neale turned out a prodigious number of books and articles on liturgy and church history, including A History of the So-Called Jansenist Church of
Holland (1858); an account of the Roman Catholic Church of Utrecht and its break from Rome in the 1700s; and his scholarly Essays on Liturgiology and Church History (1863). Neale contributed to church music by writing original hymns, including two volumes of Hymns for Children (1842, 1846), but especially by translating Greek and Latin hymns into English. These translations appeared in Medieval Hymns and Sequences (1851, 1863, 1867), The Hymnal Noted (1852, 1854), Hymns of the Eastern Church (1862), and Hymns Chiefly Medieval (1865). Because a number of Neale's translations were judged unsingable, editors usually amended his work, as evident already in the 1861 edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern; Neale claimed no rights to his texts and was pleased that his translations could contribute to hymnody as the "common property of Christendom."
Bert Polman
John Mason Neale was a prolific author, poet and first and foremost a translator of texts. He was especially adept at translating Latin and today’s hymn is a case in point, having translated this 15th century text into the text we sing today.
Next week, we will continue to look at this hymn and John Mason Neale’s work as a translator of Latin and Greek. We will also delve into the Agincourt song and its origins. For now, enjoy the following video of this timeless hymn.
