The happy morn is come

The happy morn is come. Thomas Haweis* (1734-1820). From Haweis’s Carmina Christo, or, Hymns to the Saviour (1792). It is an Easter hymn, with the second line normally ‘Triumphant o’er the grave’, though there are variations. In the USA it was reprinted in The Sabbath Hymn Book: for the Service of Song in the House of the Lord, edited by Lowell Mason*, Edwards Amasa Park, and Austin Phelps (New York and Boston, 1858) as ‘The happy morn is come’ with a reference to Psalm 68: 18: ‘Thou hast led Captivity captive’. This refers to the refrain, ‘Captivity is captive led;/ For Jesus liveth, that was dead.’ It occurs in many 19th-century American books, and in Britain in the Hymnal Companion to...