Lord of beauty, thine the splendour

Lord of beauty, thine the splendour. Cyril Argentine Alington* (1872-1955). First published in Eton Faces (Eton, 1933), the book which Alington published as a farewell to Eton when leaving to become Dean of Durham. It then appeared in the Eton College Hymn Book (Oxford, 1937) with the tune OBIIT, by Walter Parratt* (but many other tunes have also been used, including Basil Harwood*’s ST AUDREY). The ‘burning sun’ and ‘moonlight tender’ in the first stanza are reminiscent of the first stanza of ‘All creatures of our God and King’, the paraphrase by W.H. Draper* of the ‘Cantico di frate sole’* by St Francis. Draper’s translation was included in the Public School Hymn Book (1919) and was...