1 Hallelujah! best and sweetest
Of the hymns of praise above;
Hallelujah! thou repeatest,
Angel Host, these notes of love;
This ye utter,
While your golden harps ye move.
2 Hallelujah! Church Victorious,
Join the concert of the sky;
Hallelujah! bright and glorious,
Lift, ye Saints, this strain on high;
We, poor exiles,
Join not yet your melody.
3 Hallelujah! strains of gladness,
Suit not souls with anguish torn;
Hallelujah! sounds of sadness
Best become the heart forlorn;
Our offences
We will bitter tears must mourn.
4 But our earnest supplication,
Holy God, we raise to thee;
Visit us with thy salvation,
Make us all thy joys to see.
Hallelujah!
Ours at length this strain shall be.
Source: Laudes Domini: a selection of spiritual songs, ancient and modern for use in the prayer-meeting #534
First Line: | Alleluia, best and sweetest |
Author: | John Chandler |
Language: | English |
Copyright: | Public Domain |
Alleluia, dulce carmen. [Week before Septuagesima.] The earliest form in which this hymn is found is in three manuscripts of the 11th century in the British Museum. From a Durham manuscript of the 11th century, it was published in the Latin Hymns of the Anglo-Saxon Church (Surtees Society), 1851, p. 55. The text is in Daniel, i. No. 263, and with further readings in iv. p. 152; and in the Hymnarium Sarisuriense, 1851, p. 59. [Rev. W. A. Shoults, B.D.]
Translations in common use:—
1. Alleluia! best and sweetest. Of the hymns of praise above. By J. Chandler, first published in his Hymns of the Primitive Church, 1837, No. 59, in 4 stanzas of 6 lines, as the first of two renderings of the hymn. This translation is found in a great number of collections with the first two lines complete, but usually with a few alterations in the rest of the hymn.
--Excerpts from John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)