The Ring & the Gem
Sometimes I wish the word "classical" would drop from the phrase "classical music" like a stone into the sea, so that we might remember how much the works of the great composers of the Western tradition meant for whole peoples. This was so even when they traveled about and sometimes settled in an adopted country. So George Frideric Handel went to England and became a star of the Hanoverian court and of the playhouses too, where Englishmen flocked to hear the mighty marches of Judas Maccabaeus, and the whimsical movements from passion to passion in Alexander's Feast, not to mention the sacred strains of Elijah and the Messiah.
The best arrangers of melodies and compilers of hymnals had vast landscapes of music in their minds, of infinite variety, nor did they draw a sharp distinction between what was fit for the rich man in the box at Covent Garden and what was fit for farmers gathering on the village green. That meant that they could sometimes, as it were, fit things in reverse: instead of writing a new text for a given melody, they could see that the melody would be splendid for a text already written, if the text were justly adapted to it.
That is what an arranger named William Dressler did for one of Handel's most hauntingly beautiful melodies, the air "And He Shall Feed His Flock," from Messiah. The poem in question is "Come Unto Me, Ye Weary," written by William Chatterton Dix (1867), a Scottish businessman—and that, too, says much about the place of song and poetry in the hearts of ordinary people.
Rest for the Weary
Dix begins each of four stanzas with promises spoken by Jesus, followed by an exclamation of the grateful heart and a meditation on what those words offer to us. The first promise—and the touchstone for the whole poem—comes from Matthew 11:28:
"Come unto me, ye weary,
And I will give you rest."
O blessed voice of Jesus,
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.
To the Handel air—sometimes designated as Messiah, sometimes as And He Shall Feed His Flock—the words must be adapted thus:
"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.
I fell in love with this brilliant combination the first time I sang it. Handel's melody is at once intricate and simple, surprising and clear, and the swelling power of the final couplet, with its repetition within a repetition, as we leap an entire octave on the final note of that third love, is like nothing else I have ever found in an English hymnal.
Light for the Wandering
A less inspired poet might try at this point to continue with the verse from Matthew, but Dix turns to a second gift Jesus promises us, and he gives it an utterance parallel to the first:
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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