To-day our Lord went up on high

To-day our Lord went up on high. Johannes Zwick* (ca. 1496- 1542), translated by Catherine Winkworth* (1829-1878).  This hymn for Ascension-tide was dated by Winkworth at 1538. The German original was ‘Auf diesen Tag bedenken wir’, annotated by James Mearns* in JJ, p. 1305, as ‘Auf diesen Tag so denken wir’, although he points out that it had variant first lines. It was entitled ‘Another hymn on the Ascension of Christ’. Mearns described it as the finest of Zwick’s hymns: ‘its spirit of joyful faith, its conciseness, and its beauty of form, have kept it in use among the Lutherans as well as among the Reformed’ (JJ, p. 1305). Winkworth dated it 1538.  Winkworth’s translation was made for...