I Vow to Thee, My Country


"I Vow to Thee, My Country" is a British patriotic hymn, created in 1921, when a poem by Sir Cecil Spring Rice was set to music by Gustav Holst.

History

The origin of the hymn's text is a poem by diplomat Sir Cecil Spring Rice, written in 1908 or 1912, entitled "Urbs Dei or "The Two Fatherlands". The poem described how a Christian owes his loyalties to both his homeland and the heavenly kingdom.
In 1908, Spring Rice was posted to the British Embassy in Stockholm. In 1912, he was appointed as Ambassador to the United States of America, where he influenced the administration of Woodrow Wilson to abandon neutrality and join Britain in the war against Germany. After the United States entered the war, he was recalled to Britain. Shortly before his departure from the US in January 1918, he re-wrote and renamed "Urbs Dei, significantly altering the first verse to concentrate on the themes of love and sacrifice rather than "the noise of battle" and "the thunder of her guns", creating a more sombre tone in view of the dreadful loss of life suffered in the Great War. The first verse in both versions invoke Britain ; the second verse, the Kingdom of Heaven.
According to Sir Cecil's granddaughter, the rewritten verse of 1918 was never intended to appear alongside the first verse of the original poem but was replacing it; the original first verse is nevertheless sometimes known as the "rarely sung middle verse". The text of the original poem was sent by Spring Rice to William Jennings Bryan in a letter shortly before his death in February 1918.
The poem circulated privately for a few years until it was set to music by Holst, to a tune he adapted from his Jupiter to fit the words of the poem.
It was performed as a unison song with orchestra in the early 1920s, and it was finally published as a hymn in 1925/6 in the Songs of Praise hymnal.
It was included in later hymnals, including:
PublicationYearNo.
Songs of praise: enlarged edition1931319
Methodist Hymn Book1933900
Songs of Praise for America193843
The Book of Common Praise: being the hymn book of The Church of England in Canada1939805
Hymns Ancient & Modern, Revised1950579
Songs of Praise for Schools195749
Church Hymnal, Fourth Edition1960312
Hymns Ancient & Modern, New Standard Edition1983295
Common Praise: A new edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern2000355
Church Hymnary 2005704

Tune

In 1921, Gustav Holst adapted the music from a section of Jupiter from his suite The Planets to create a setting for the poem. The music was extended slightly to fit the final two lines of the first verse. At the request of the publisher Curwen, Holst made a version as a unison song with orchestra. This was probably first performed in 1921 and became a common element at Armistice memorial ceremonies, especially after it was published as a hymn in 1926.
In 1926, Holst harmonised the tune to make it usable as a hymn, which was included in the hymnal Songs of Praise. In that version, the lyrics were unchanged, but the tune was then called "Thaxted". The editor of the new edition of Songs of Praise was Holst's close friend Ralph Vaughan Williams, which may have provided the stimulus for Holst's co-operation in producing the hymn.
Holst's daughter Imogen recorded that, at "the time when he was asked to set these words to music, Holst was so over-worked and over-weary that he felt relieved to discover they 'fitted' the tune from Jupiter".
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Lyrics

The hymn as printed in Songs of Praise consisted only of the two verses of the 1918 version, credited "Words: Cecil Spring-Rice, 1918; Music: Thaxted", as follows:

I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above,
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love;
The love that asks no questions, the love that stands the test,
That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;
The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,
The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.
And there's another country, I've heard of long ago,
Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know;
We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;
Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;
And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,
And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.

The final line of the second verse is based on Proverbs, "Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace" , in the context of which the feminine pronoun refers to Wisdom.
The original first verse of Spring-Rice's poem "Urbs Dei/"The Two Father Lands", never set to music, was as follows:

I heard my country calling, away across the sea,
Across the waste of waters, she calls and calls to me.
Her sword is girded at her side, her helmet on her head,
And around her feet are lying the dying and the dead;
I hear the noise of battle, the thunder of her guns;
I haste to thee, my mother, a son among thy sons.

Contemporary use

First performed in 1921, it is still associated with Remembrance Day services all over the Commonwealth of Nations.