Dearest Jesu, we are here

Dearest Jesu, we are here. George Ratcliffe Woodward* (1848-1934), after Tobias Clausnitzer* (1619-1684).

This is a hymn loosely based on Clausnitzer’s ‘Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier dich und dein Wort anzuhören’*. It was printed in three stanzas in Woodward’s Songs of Syon (1904). Two were included in the Second Supplement (1916) to the Second Edition of A&M.

Dearest Jesu, we are here,
  At thy call, thy Presence owning;
 Pleading now in holy fear
  That thy Sacrifice atoning:
Word Incarnate, much in wonder
On this myst’ry deep we ponder.

Jesu, strong to save, - the same
  Yesterday, to-day, for ever, - 
Make us fear and love thy Name,
  Serving thee with best endeavour
In this life O ne’er forsake us,
But to bliss hereafter take us. 

The omitted stanza was the second, presumably because of the awkward zeugma in line 5, and the rhyme in lines 5-6:

Under forms of bread and wine
    Simple hearts in faith adore thee:
Born of Mary, Son divine,
    Low we bow the knee before thee:
Opening heart alike and coffer,
Body, soul, to thee we offer.

The last two lines have only the most tenuous relationship to Clausnitzer’s ‘Gutes denken, tun und dichten/ mußt du selbst in uns verrichten’; and stanza 3, which in Woodward’s version begins

Jesu, strong to save – the same
    Yesterday, to-day, for ever -

has no connection with Clausnitzer’s vision of radiance: ‘O du Glanz der Herrlichkeit,/ Licht vom Licht, aus Gott geboren’.

Evidently what attracted Woodward was the very beautiful tune by Johann Rudolf Ahle*. In Songs of Syon he printed it three times, the first harmonized by George Herbert Palmer*, followed by two more complicated settings by J.S. Bach*.

Stanzas 1 and 3 were included in A&MR and subsequent editions of A&M (A&MNS, A&MCP, A&MRW). As Maurice Frost points out (1962, p.354) Woodward’s hymn is ‘after’ Clausnitzer, rather than a translation. A more accurate version of Clausnitzer’s original is that by Catherine Winkworth* in Lyra Germanica II (1858), beginning ‘Blessed Jesu, at Thy word/ We are gather’d all to hear Thee’.

JRW

Further Reading

1. Maurice Frost, Historical Companion to Hymns Ancient and Modern (London: William Clowes and Sons, for the Proprietors, 1962).