Journal
Crown him with many crowns
Posted on November 21st, 2005, in the small hours
Until fairly recently I knew this hymn only for the impressively verbose line: "Creator of the rolling spheres, ineffably sublime," which I have often heard pointed to as an example of why hymns should be used with caution. But Chris and Jennie Orange used part of 'Crown him' at Kings a couple of weeks ago and since then I have been inundated with requests (ok, a slight exaggeration) for the full thing, so I've set about getting to grips with it.
The melody is superb, and although the full harmonic effect requires constant chord changes on the guitar, I have distilled a fairly acceptable simplification (see below for a pdf). I've lowered the key from D to C, perhaps mainly because I've been learning it in the recovery stages of my lost voice. It doesn't go above the D even in D, so the usual key is actually fine.
Lyrically 'Crown him' definitely took some untangling before I felt I really knew what was going on. I don't think I'm alone. I've seen several websites praising the hymn, yet still apparently misunderstanding some of the lyrics; a good example being the capitalisation of 'him' in the last line of the 'Lord of love' verse, which when you unpack the language clearly refers to the angel of the line before, not to Christ. (Even Cyberhymnal preserves this error.)
There are apparently twelve verses in circulation: six written by Matthew Bridges, and six additional verses by Godfrey Thring. Cyberhymnal lists nine, and there are fairly standard four- and five-verse selections drawing from both authors. I've been using the five-verse version with first lines as follows:
- Crown him with many crowns
- Crown him the Lord of life
- Crown him the Lord of love
- Crown him the Lord of peace
- Crown him the Lord of years
That selection avoids most of the more baffling language ("Fruit of the mystic rose"?!) The last of those verses is indeed that of "ineffably sublime" fame, but the final lines of that verse are simply superb:
All hail, Redeemer, hail! For Thou has died for me
Thy praise shall never, never fail throughout eternity
I love this hymn more every time I play it. I used it at Kings yesterday morning. I think it will prove a permanent addition to my repertoire.
- Crown him with many crowns - C with simplified chords in black and full chords in grey (37kb pdf)
