Illuminations
Come Unto Me
by Anthony Esolen
I have experienced two kinds of "youth" music at Christian services. One is like listening to a song that was popular in 1968 and that you have heard five hundred times too often, so that the melody is what some people shrewdly call an "earworm," a tune that wriggles its way from ear to brain and lodges there for a day or two, till you dislodge it by swimming underwater and banging the side of your head afterwards till the wax loosens and the water and the music come out.
The other hasn't so much charm as that. Its lyrics don't rise to the literacy of Ride, Captain, ride, upon your mystery ship, or 'Enery the Eighth I am I am. It is trans-grammatical. You don't have lyrics but word flotsam, sometimes projected onto the wall, and loud wailing, whoa, yea, and amplifiers that keep you from noticing that there is no melody.
I am looking at the Hymnal for American Youth (New York, The Century Company, 1924). It is edited by H. Augustine Smith, Professor of Church Worship, Music, Hymnody and Pageantry, Boston University. I doubt that there is any such personage at Boston University now. What there is, it may be best not to ask.
Professor Smith devoted his whole life to sacred music and chorales and patriotic and pious celebrations. This one was by no means his only hymnal, and since he himself was a teacher of young people, both inside and outside the classroom, he must have had a fair idea of what they found inspiring. So there are plenty of marches and anthems in this volume, and hymns specially composed for Sunday schools, and for missionary action. It is a hymnal with a good lot of what Lewis called the "chest," the thymos or high-spirited drive of youth, with none of our current slack self-indulgence, self-pity, or self-adoration.
The Music
And it preserves at least one gem that I have never found in another hymnal. The text is well known: William Chatterton Dix's "Come Unto Me, Ye Weary." The melody is also well known: it is called, in this hymnal, "Messiah," after its source, Handel's oratorio. It is an adaptation of the sweet and profoundly moving air, "And He Shall Lead His Flock."
If only these words on the page could sing! The melody is at once easy to recognize and impossible to forget. Its rhythm is mainly an alternation of eighth notes and quarter notes, one beat to two, but with held quarter notes (three beats) and the occasional lilt of the held eighth and a sixteenth. It seldom requires the singers to step more than one note up or one note down, but when it does—watch out. A dive of an entire octave ends the first line of each verse, and a leap of an entire octave—the same notes in fact—gives life to the joyful repetition of a key word in each final line. I will mark these with boldface. In the middle of the air comes a section that modulates into the minor key associated with the major, before returning to joy; I will mark that with italics.
The Poem
The poem is a verse appreciation of the comforting words of Jesus in Matthew 11:28–30: "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me: for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light." Dix sees these words in the context of the entire journey of the Christian soul.
I will print them as they are sung in the hymnal to Handel's melody:
"Come unto me, ye weary, and I will give you rest."
O blessed voice of Jesus, which comes to hearts oppressed,
Which comes to hearts oppressed!
It tells of benediction, of pardon, grace, and peace;
Of joy that hath no ending, of love which cannot cease;
Of joy that hath no ending, of love, of love which cannot cease.
Anthony Esolen is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Thales College and the author of over 30 books, including Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church (Tan, with a CD), Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Regnery), and The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Ignatius). He has also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House) and, with his wife Debra, publishes the web magazine Word and Song (anthonyesolen.substack.com). He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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