Lord of all hopefulness, Lord of all joy

Lord of all hopefulness, Lord of all joy. Jan Struther* (1901-53). This is the best known of the twelve hymns written by Struther for SofPE (1931). It was given the title ‘All-Day Hymn’. It was written to be sung to the tune SLANE, which had been published in 1909 by Patrick Weston Joyce in Old Irish Folk Music and Songs. That tune was used very appropriately for the Irish words ‘Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart’*, but Struther gave it entirely different life by using fresh words (some of which were unusual in hymns, such as ‘the plane and the lathe’ in stanza 2). The images of the day in four stages, waking, working, coming home, and sleeping, are very effective, and those images are...