“Quiet lives may make but quiet reading,” says the author of a grateful and wistful book about the life of John Ellerton, who wrote our Hymn of the Week, one of the most beloved among the English, and long loved by my family too here across the waters. Such lives, he says, may lack “the excitement of stirring scenes and startling actions; still, there are times when it is a relief to turn from the study of those who lived in the full glare of the world’s observation to the simple narrative of some favorite poet who sang, so to speak, in the shade. In fact, the one is as necessary as the other if we are to form an adequate conception of all the minds which mold an age. A work on birds, to be complete, must include the nightingale as well as the eagle, or one on flowers must not, while it describes the rose, despise the violet.”
I’ve seen many an eagle. In Nova Scotia, whence I am writing these words, the bald eagle occupies the place of the turkey vulture farther south. I’ve never seen or heard a nightingale, not that I know of, because that’s a European bird, but I have seen and heard the wood thrush, and I’d dearly love to have a pair of them, shy as they sometimes are, hiding among the shrubbery behind our house, but singing now and again, especially in the evening — when their cousins the robins also sing. And though roses are bold and brash, the small wild violet is dearer to my heart, and I can say with Wordsworth,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

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Indeed, if you went to Windermere in the summer of 1847 or 1848, you might have found the young John Ellerton there, on holiday from Cambridge, on the same lake where Wordsworth himself loved to row on an evening, alone. John would be reading the poetry of Wordsworth and Tennyson — filling himself with it, hours on end. That’s what the lad was like. His father, full of merry and kindly tales, had passed away when John was a boy. So John wasn’t much for the bold outdoor sports that roused the spirit of public Cambridge. But he did join a literary society, called “The Attic,” where the young men read their own essays and their poetry to each other. I can’t resist giving you the final passage of a poem that John Ellerton wrote then, called “The Death of Baldur.” Some of you may know that the story of Baldur moved the boy “Jack” Lewis, whom we know better by his initials C. S., to tears — not of sadness exactly, but of longing, and of wistfulness before the mystery of what is good and beautiful, even when, or especially when, it has passed away. For the evil Loki had tricked the goddess Frigga into revealing the only thing on earth that might harm Baldur. It was the mistletoe. So Loki, as a trick, gave a mistletoe arrow to the blind Hodur, to shoot at Baldur. For Baldur that day, brave and happy, was taking all the arrows of the gods, themselves happy too, confident that nothing could hurt him. But Baldur was slain by this trickery. Here is how Ellerton’s poem ends, with Frigga sadly calming the spirits of the gods of Valhalla, all of them weeping because Baldur, Baldur the Good, was dead:

“ Weep on, for we have lost him; nevermore
The sunshine of his smile shall lighten up
Asgard for us. But unto us, not him,
The hurt is. Not for ever must we dwell
In this our kingdom, but the Sons of Fire
Must quell us, and the Evil Ones be strong,
Till we and they have fallen. Then once again,
Scatheless and bright, shall Baldur fare from Hel,
And here for ever under a clear sky
Talk of old tales, and all these baleful times,
As of a troublous dream long past away.”

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“But what of your Hymn of the Week?” you cry out. Well, I hope I’ve shown that the feelings Ellerton expresses in “The Day Thou Gavest” are such as he had all his life long, and that he knew, too, that such feelings are universal to mankind. They suggest that we all do long for what we have not seen, except maybe through a glass, dimly; that we have the sense, as two of us walk down a quiet road, that a third is nearby; that there is a land beyond the sunset, where they have taken King Arthur. The risen Lord assures us that these are not mere dreams. The day slopes down toward night, but “Beloved,” says the Apostle, “now we are the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” The day that God gave us is gone; but it is not night for the Church; and we await the morning star that rises, and never sets.

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The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended, The darkness falls at thy behest; To thee our morning hymns ascended, Thy praise shall sanctify our rest. We thank thee that thy Church, unsleeping, While earth rolls onward into light, Through all the world her watch is keeping, And rests not now by day or night. As o'er each continent and island The dawn leads on another day, The voice of prayer is never silent, Nor dies the strain of praise away. The sun that bids us rest is waking Our brethren neath the western sky, And hour by hour fresh lips are making Thy wondrous doings heard on high. So be it, Lord; thy throne shall never, Like earth's proud empires, pass away; Thy kingdom stands, and grows forever, Till all thy creatures own thy sway.

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Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymn, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. To support this project, please join us as a free or paid subscriber.

Word & Song by Anthony Esolen

reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true