Psalm 104

O worship the King

with
HANOVER
LYONS

I. Text: Origins

This hymn by Robert Grant (1780–1838) is a paraphrase of Psalm 104. It has a perplexing early publication history, with no definitive answer as to its proper source. Some older commentaries, including Edwin Hatfield in The Poets of the Church (1884), have claimed “O worship the King” was published in the Christian Observer in 1806 and revised in 1812. This is not correct; the hymn appearing in that publication on those dates was “When gathering clouds around I view” (PDF).

The earliest dated publication was in a collection titled Hymns for Private Devotion, Selected and Original (London: J. Hatchard & Son, 1827), whose editorship was uncredited but has been attributed to Bethia Fuller-Maitland. In this collection, the hymn appeared as number XXXI, uncredited, in an appendix made after the index had been produced. This version was given in six stanzas of eight lines. It contains the unique phrase “And sinful as frail” in the fifth stanza. The preface, which is dated July 1827, says the original compositions were contributed by friends, and the editor admitted to making “a few slight alterations.”

The proper dating of this version is questionable, for a few reasons:

1. A copy of this collection in the possession of Princeton Theological Seminary contains an appendix of only fifteen hymns, with the index being pages 187 to 192. The copy held by the University of California, in which this hymn is found, has an appendix paged 187 to 211 after the index paged 187 to 192, apparently with the idea of replacing the previous index, except the old index stayed and a new index was not provided. That is to say, the new pages were bound with old copies, so the proper dating of the new pages is unclear.[1]

2. The copy owned by the University of California includes a handwritten inscription, “Thomas Fuller Maitland from his very affectionate mother, Park Place, July 16th, 1836.” If this copy was given by the editor to her son, it was quite possibly done shortly after the new appendix pages had been printed.

3. The version of the text in this edition has identical punctuation to a copy printed in 1830 (next below), even where such punctuation is odd and would likely have been changed by another editor (“And dark is his path, / On the wings of the storm”). This suggests direct borrowing from one publication to another. Given the editor’s admission of making alterations, Fuller-Maitland is evidently the one doing the borrowing, which means this copy is quite likely from after 1830, as late as 1836 (based on the inscription).

Fig. 1. Hymns for Private Devotion, Selected and Original (London: J. Hatchard & Son, 1827).

In 1830, the hymn appeared twice. One of those instances, probably the earliest, was in A Collection of Psalms and Hymns for the Use of St. Mary’s, St. Giles’s, and Trinity Churches, Reading (Reading: E. Havell, 1830), uncredited. The collection had been advertised for sale in the Reading Mercury on 27 February 1830. The text here is identical to the pseudo-1827 printing, except for “feeble as frail” (st. 5). The collection did not contain a preface. Notice the language “echo thy praise” at 6:8, versus what would come later (“lisp to thy praise”).

Also in 1830, the hymn appeared uncredited in A Selection of Psalms and Hymns, Adapted to the Services of the Church and to Private Devotion, 6th ed. (London: Ellerton & Henderson, 1830), edited by James Haldane Stewart. This version has been reduced to five stanzas (omitting stanza 2), and it contains several variants, such as “His unchangeable love!” (1.4), “Surrounded with praise” (1.8), “Like a girdle” (2.8), “How sure to the end” (4.6), and “echo thy praise” (5.8). Stewart’s preface contains no useful information on his sources or process. Also, the possible existence of this hymn in the 4th edition requires additional research (it was not in the 3rd, 1820).

The hymn’s earliest appearance in the United States was in A Selection of Hymns Adapted to the Devotions of the Closet, the Family, and the Social Circle (NY: Jonathan Leavitt, 1831), edited by Archibald Alexander. The hymn seems to have been copied from Stewart’s collection because it contains the same five-stanza reduction and its variants. In the preface, the editor acknowledged consulting at least one London collection without a topical arrangement, but that would not describe Stewart’s collection.

The hymn next appeared in Edward Bickersteth’s Christian Psalmody (London: E.B. Seeley & Sons, 1833 | Fig. 5), in six stanzas of four lines, without music, unattributed. In the earliest printings of Bickersteth’s collection, each line was divided into two smaller phrases by an em-dash, but in subsequent editions the em-dash was removed in favor of longer phrases.

The hymn then appeared in H.V. Elliott’s Psalms and Hymns for Public, Private, and Social Worship (London: Holdsworth and Ball, 1835 | Fig. 6), this time reformatted as three stanzas of eight lines. The differences here are very minor: a change from “establish’d” to “stablish’d,” which works better for the meter, a change from “It streams” to “In streams,” and a correction to the last phrase, “shall lisp to thy praise.” In his Dictionary of Hymnology, p. 855, John Julian claimed, “From the preface to Elliott’s Ps. & Hys. we find that the text in Bickersteth was not authorized,” except no known edition of Elliott’s collection contains a preface, and this claim cannot otherwise be confirmed.

Lastly, the hymn appeared in a posthumous edition of Grant’s work, Sacred Poems (London: Saunders and Otley, 1839), edited by Grant’s brother, Charles Grant (Lord Glenelg). The preface indicated how the hymns in this edition represented “a more correct and authentic version” than what had previously circulated. In this collection, the hymn was reformatted again, this time in six stanzas of eight short lines. The text is in agreement with Elliott’s version, except a change back to “It streams,” and the omission of “The” before “deep thunder-clouds,” which interrupts the flow of the meter.

II. Text: Analysis

Grant’s text is a free paraphrase of Psalm 104, roughly covering verses 1–13 and 24–33. He patterned the meter after the traditional setting of 10.10.11.11 established by William Kethe’s version in Foure Score and Seuen Psalmes of Dauid (Geneva, 1560), repeated in the complete English psalter of 1562, The Whole Booke of Psalmes, Collected into Englysh Metre by T. Sternhold, J. Hopkins & Others [see Sternhold & Hopkins]. This connection is reflected in the way Bickersteth’s and Elliott’s printings gave the meter as “104th M.”

For hymnologist Erik Routley (1917–1982), this hymn ranked among his favorites:

For sheer literary grace and beauty this may be one of the six finest hymns in the language. We all love it for its combination of effortless energy, high-spirited innocence, and the occasional touch of superb dignity. Almost every word in it is a word in the common man’s vocabulary—the vocabulary both of its own day and of ours. Yet in the first and last verses there rise two towering lines, built in monolithic style, which give a grand sweep of structure to the whole—

Pavilion’d in splendour, and girded with praise . . . O measureless might, ineffable love.

This highly wrought and eloquent simplicity gives the whole hymn a texture which very happily reflects that of the psalm on which it is founded. For the 104th Psalm is, even among the psalms, an astonishing piece of writing. . . . The total message of the hymn is that all that is set down in Psalm 104 is a pageant not merely of God’s power but also of his love. This takes us to the heart of the Christian teaching on creation.[2]

III. Tunes

1. HANOVER

In England, the preferred tune is HANOVER, generally attributed to William Croft (1678–1727), first published in A Supplement to the New Version of Psalms, 6th ed. (Savoy: John Nutt, 1708 | Fig. 4). The original printing was headed Psalm LXVII even though the tune was intended for the 149th Psalm of Tate & Brady’s New Version (1696/1698) or Psalm 104 of the old Sternhold & Hopkins edition (1562). The music was in two parts, melody and bass, set to “Our God bless us all in mercy and love,” which is a paraphrase of Psalm 67, author unknown, first printed in the first edition of this supplement (1700) with a different tune.

This tune was first called HANOVER in A Collection of Tunes, suited to … Watts’s Imitation of the Psalms of David (1722), named after the House of Hanover, which was the royal family of King George I (1660–1727). J.R. Watson has called it “a magnificent and strong tune which carries the words with great conviction and sureness.”[3] See Leaver & Temperley (1994) for further discussion on issues related to Croft’s authorship.

2. LYONS

The other most common tune is LYONS, most likely by Joseph Martin Kraus (1756–1792), from his “Thema med variationer” (scherzo), possibly written in 1784 or 1785 during a visit to London. Two manuscript copies of Kraus’ piece are held at Kungl Musikaliska Akademien, Stockholm, and at Uppsala University. The oldest surviving printed copy attributed to Kraus is in Musikaliskt Tidsfördrif, no. 14–15 (1793 | Fig. 5).

A few additional early printings of this tune have added to the confusion of authorship. The oldest known printing of this melody is “A Minuetto con XII variazioni per il piano forte con accompagnamento d’un violin,” published in London in 1791 and attributed to Ignaz Pleyel. The same piece was published under an English title, “Sonatina with Twelve Variations,” ca. 1805, credited to “G. Haydn,” which seems to be the source for all subsequent attempts to credit the tune to either Joseph (Giuseppe) Haydn or Johann (Giovanni) Michael Haydn. Some scholars believe the Pleyel and Haydn copies were plagiarized and sold by publishers to capitalize on the popularity of the two composers.

The tune entered English hymnody through William Gardiner’s Sacred Melodies from Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, vol. 2 (London: William Gardiner, 1815 | Fig. 6), where it was set to Philip Doddridge’s hymn “O praise ye the Lord, prepare a new song” in an arrangement for small orchestra. Gardiner is credited for assigning the name LYONS, a city in France, for unknown reasons, although this name does not appear on the same page as the arrangement. Gardiner also perpetuated the attribution to Haydn.

by CHRIS FENNER
for Hymnology Archive
15 February 2019
rev. 30 January 2025

Footnotes:

1. Princeton copy: https://archive.org/details/hrivated00full/ ; California copy: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.31175035206377

2. Erik Routley, Hymns and the Faith (London: John Murray, 1955), pp. 8–9.

3. J.R. Watson, An Annotated Anthology of Hymns (Oxford: University Press, 2002), p. 264.

Related Resources:

John Julian, “O worship the King,” A Dictionary of Hymnology (London, 1892), pp. 854–855: Google Books

Bertil H. van Boer Jr., Die Werke von Joseph Martin Kraus (Stockholm: Kgl. schwedische Musikakademie, 1988).

J. Wilson, “Julian and ‘O worship the King,’” Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Bulletin, vol. 12 (October 1989), p. 155.

Fred L. Precht, “Oh worship the King,” Lutheran Worship Hymnal Companion (St. Louis: Concordia, 1992), pp. 474–475.

David W. Music, “LYONS,” Hymnal 1982 Companion, vol. 3B (NY: Church Hymnal Corp., 1994), p. 996–997.

Robin A. Leaver & Nicholas Temperley, “O worship the King, all glorious above,” Hymnal 1982 Companion, vol. 3B (NY: Church Hymnal Corp., 1994), pp. 727–731.

Bert Polman, “O worship the King,” Psalter Hymnal Handbook (Grand Rapids: CRC, 1998), p. 588–589.

Margaret K. Dismore, “LYONS: A tune in search of its composer,” The Hymn, vol. 58, no. 2 (Spring 2007), pp. 27–31: HathiTrust

Carl P. Daw Jr. “O worship the King, all glorious above!” Glory to God: A Companion (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2016), pp. 43–44.

Leland Ryken, “O worship the King,” 40 Favorite Hymns on the Christian Life (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2019), pp. 54–57: Amazon

“O worship the King, all glorious above,” Hymnary.org:
https://hymnary.org/text/o_worship_the_king_all_glorious_above