O Gracious Dwelling - three

mrcopper

O gracious dwelling of our King, rise up and let the Magi in,
Who come to honor, laud and sing the Child who saves us from our sin.
They offer gold and rich perfume, and all the gifts they have to bring,
To praise the One who from your womb came forth to be our Lord and King.

You are the temple, you the star, the tabernacle full of grace,
A host for pilgrims near and far, on earth the purest Holy place.
From you O Queen, O seat, O bride, the greatest King is born to earth.
To Him and you the wise shall ride to gift and praise the Holy birth.

Your offspring shall our Shepherd be, and you our Mother evermore.
You are our grace, our life; and He our sure salvation, source and store.
Then let all come, and bend the knee, and still the voice, and hear the call,
And show the heart in prayer, and see: the Child revealed as God to all.

Hymn by Adam Wood

Hymn music (in C) and anthem setting (SA in D major) attached.

Adam Wood

Then let all come and bend the knee and still the voice and hear His call:
Reveal the heart in prayer and see! as He revealed our God to all.

This is very close to excellent.

I'm concerned about the possible heresy in "He revealed our God"

KATHY PLUTH. Your assistance is required.

francis

technically, he did reveal God, but it is somewhat confusing because he WAS (is) God.

mrcopper

Then let us come and bend the knee, and still the voice, and hear His call,
Reveal the heart in prayer, and see: the Child revealed as God to all.

Please, the rhythm: on MJO's advice I shifted to 7 bar phrases which are kind of secretly 8 bar phrases, where the organist or music director is likely to put in pauses for breath. Does that work?

mrcopper

Adam, and other members of the committee: "Seat" puzzled me until I found "sedes sapentiae", seat of Wisdom. Which sounds relevant, wise men and all, but if you think about it, perhaps introduces an unintended comic note: Let the sages sit on Mary?

How about something like:

From you, most pure, O Queen, O Bride, the greatest King is born to earth.

and because the Kingdom is not of the earth, perhaps:

From you, most pure, O Queen, O Bride, in flesh the Word is born to earth.

chonak

If there's any reference to our Lady as "seat of wisdom", it might well be about wise men coming to bow before Wisdom on his throne.

mrcopper

Ah: that's a better interpretation: Jesus on Mary's lap, Wisdom on his throne: and the wise sages come to bow before a greater Wisdom than theirs. Ok, I like that.

Adam Wood

From you, most pure, O Queen, O Bride, the greatest King is born to earth.

and because the Kingdom is not of the earth, perhaps:

From you, most pure, O Queen, O Bride, in flesh the Word is born to earth.

No.

Queen, Seat, Bride.
Tabernacle. Dwelling. Temple.
The New Jerusalem.

Yes, the Seat of Wisdom. No it isn't comical (despite Paul Inwood's juvenile observation that "seat" and "throne" both remind him of toilets).

Vidi dominum sedentem super solium excelsum et elevatum, et plena erat omnis terra maiestate eius, et ea quae sub ipso erant, replebant templum.

I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, and the whole house was full of his majesty, and the things that were under him filled the temple.
-Is 6:1

She is high and lofty, exalted above all women.
She is full of grace; that is, the Lord's majesty. Just as the Temple is full of His presence.
She is our Mother (as the Church is our Mother also) and we are in her, filling her, inasmuch as we are under Him and He is in her.

mrcopper

Ok, I'm persuaded. Then the only change to your text is [edit] the initial re-ordering and change of pronoun. Then a new couplet added at the end. I'm still concerned about the rhythm in the hymn version; the 8 bar phrases are still being used in the anthem version.

O gracious dwelling of our King, rise up and let the Magi in,
Who come to honor, laud and sing the Child who saves us from our sin.
They offer gold and rich perfume, and all the gifts they have to bring,
To praise the One who from your womb came forth to be our Lord and King.

You are the temple, you the star, the tabernacle full of grace,
A host for pilgrims near and far, on earth the purest Holy place.
From you O Queen, O seat, O bride, the greatest King is born to earth.
To Him and you the wise shall ride to gift and praise the Holy birth.

Your offspring shall our Shepherd be, and you our Mother evermore.
You are our grace, our life; and He our sure salvation, source and store.
Then let us come and bend the knee, and still the voice, and hear the call,
And show the heart in prayer, and see: the Child revealed as God to all.

Adam Wood

Then the only change to your text is replacing "to gift" with a weak substitue, please improve

The original.

And I do like the final couplet.
I would change "His call" to "the call."
I think it is clear who is calling, and the poetic parallel sounds and feels better- to use the same word but mean something different:
bend the knee, still the voice, hear the call

i'm not sure about "reveal the heart" - i like the idea, but something about it strikes me as not right. I think its because, even though there's a comma, the penultimate line feels like a completed clause, so "Reveal" comes across as a command to Mary, not to ourselves.

something like (this needs work):
..still the voice, and hear the call
that [ draws us on / beckons us / something forward ] to see the Child revealed as God to all.

mrcopper

good points. Maybe I'm wrong but isn't "to gift" a modern slang as opposed to a well accepted verb? Change to "the" is fine, I agree about the ambiguity of reveal, but if the first syllable last line were "and" it would be clear that it's another of the series begun in previous lines: "and show the heart in prayer", perhaps.

mrcopper

From Grammar Girl:

... Google uncovers numerous web pages devoted to griping about this use of the word, suggesting that it is a fairly common usage peeve. The main gripes are that gift is inferior to give in the sense to make a present of, and that using gift this way unnecessarily contorts a perfectly good word for use in place of another perfectly good word.

Adam Wood

re: gift.
It's a perfectly fine verb in this context. "Give" is not correct because the direct object isn't the present but the receiver.

You omitted the first line of the first page that Google delivers when searching for "gift as a verb"

The use of gift as a verb is not new, at least according to the Oxford English Dictionary, which lists examples of gift used to mean to make a present of from as early as the 17th century.

And later in the same article

Incidentally, there is a second, less controversial verb sense of gift: namely, to bestow with gifts,

(This usage is retained in the more common adjective "gifted.")

mrcopper

All right, fine. To gift it is. Are you ok with "And show the heart in prayer, and see: " (I'd like to come up with a text "by Adam Wood" and not "by Adam Wood (footnote, see the places Adam disapproves of which were written by William Copper)"

O gracious dwelling of our King, rise up and let the Magi in,
Who come to honor, laud and sing the Child who saves us from our sin.
They offer gold and rich perfume, and all the gifts they have to bring,
To praise the One who from your womb came forth to be our Lord and King.

You are the temple, you the star, the tabernacle full of grace,
A host for pilgrims near and far, on earth the purest Holy place.
From you O Queen, O seat, O bride, the greatest King is born to earth.
To Him and you the wise shall ride to gift and praise the Holy birth.

Your offspring shall our Shepherd be, and you our Mother evermore.
You are our grace, our life; and He our sure salvation, source and store.
Then let us come and bend the knee, and still the voice, and hear the call,
And show the heart in prayer, and see: the Child revealed as God to all.

Adam Wood

What about:

Then let us come and bend the knee, and still the voice, and hear the call
that bids the heart to prayer, to see the Child revealed as God to all.

?

Adding another "and" doesn't work for me. I'd like the call to do something.
I think I like this better. But I'm a bit ambivalent on the repetition of "to" (to prayer, to see), but I think it might be good.

mrcopper

I like that. Another small change at 'perfume' now, to avoid 'gift' as both noun and verb?

O gracious dwelling of our King, rise up and let the Magi in,
Who come to honor, laud and sing the Child who saves us from our sin.
They offer gold and rare perfume, and all the riches that they bring,
To praise the One who from your womb came forth to be our Lord and King.

You are the temple, you the star, the tabernacle full of grace,
A host for pilgrims near and far, on earth the purest Holy place.
From you O Queen, O seat, O bride, the greatest King is born to earth.
To Him and you the wise shall ride to gift and praise the Holy birth.

Your offspring shall our Shepherd be, and you our Mother evermore.
You are our grace, our life; and He our sure salvation, source and store.
Then let us come and bend the knee, and still the voice, and hear the call.
Let heart be bid to pray and see the Child revealed as God to all.

And I got no response to query about rhythm (I know, 'tis the season to be busy) so I'm back to the original regular meter, in halved notation. Attached.

Adam Wood

Another small change at 'perfume' now, to avoid 'gift' as both noun and verb
They offer gold and rare perfume, and all the riches that they bring,

I'm not a huge fan.

mrcopper

The original was great, but it conflicted with the later use of gift to my perhaps oversensitive sensors.

Adam Wood

Using gift twice, in two different speech parts, separated by eight intervening lines, should not be cause for concern.

mrcopper

Could you be persuaded by this: singing "rich" on a sustained note is problematic, while "rare" is a better sound? (edit) this is a very minor point, your original is fine, and the intervening bars, as you say, minimize the conflict.

Adam Wood

"rare" hits me about the same way as "mild" and "pure"

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