And All Thy Day Be Bright

K. must know me very well, because this week she surprised me with a recording of Ralph Vaughn Williams's Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis.  I can't really describe the swell of emotions I feel when I listen to the Tallis Fantasia, the way the strings flow back and forth in chords both triumphant and sad, pushing from the low into the transcendant.  That blending of major and minor was a particular gift of Vaughn Williams, and probably the reason so many of my favorite hymns and orchestral works have his mark on them.  Still, in this case his achievement was largely in orchestrating what was already a beautiful melody.

[especially from 1:05 to 3:24]

As a hymn, the Tallis theme has had many incarnations.  The original, Renaissance song was a somewhat melancholy meditation on man's tendency to strive in vain.  In the early 18th Century, Joseph Addison--one half of the Addison & Steele essay-writing powerhouse--was prompted by personal illness to refashion the song into a hymn of deathbed consolation.  Both of those versions lean heavily on the theme's solemnity, but a later adaptation gets the lyric just right, each verse tracking the melody's progression from sorrow into peace:

I heard the voice of Jesus say,

Come unto me and rest;

lay down, thou weary one, lay down

thy head upon my breast."

I came to Jesus as I was, 

so weary, worn, and sad;

I found in him a resting place,

and he has made me glad.

   ---   ---   ---

I heard the voice of Jesus say,

"I am this dark world's light;

look unto me, thy morn shall rise,

and all thy day be bright."

I looked to Jesus, and I found

in him my Star, my Sun;

and in that light of life I'll walk

till traveling days are done.

[1st and 3rd verses of "I heard the voice of Jesus say" by Horatius Bonar, 1846].

I was thinking of the Tallis Fantasia on Good Friday, and was humming it again today.  It's a beautiful song and if K. loves me she'll play it at my funeral.  When I hear those heartbreaking chords, my thoughts turn again and again to the Atonement, understanding again how the sweetest joys have come at great cost.