All creatures of our God and King

All creatures of our God and King. William Henry Draper* (1855-1933). This is a free versification of the ‘Cantico di frate sole’* of St Francis. It was written for a children’s Whitsuntide Festival at Adel, Leeds, when Draper was the incumbent at Adel, between 1899 and 1919. Draper could not remember the exact year in which he wrote the translation, but it was published in the Public School Hymn Book (1919), so it was known before that book was compiled. It was written to be sung to the tune LASST UNS ERFREUEN, the arrangement by Ralph Vaughan Williams* of a German tune from the Cologne Geistliche Kirchengesänge (Köln, 1623). It was set in EH to ‘Ye watchers and ye holy ones’* by Athelstan...