Sages from the East afar
When they saw this wondrous star,
Went to worship and adore Him
And to lay their gifts before Him
-: Who was born that midnight hour :-
Him they found in Bethlehem
Without crown or diadem,
They but saw a maiden lowly
With an infant pure and holy
-: Resting in her loving arms :-
Guided by the star they found
Him whose praise the ages sound.
We have still a star to guide us
Whose unsullied rays provide us
-: With the light to find our Lord :-
And this star so fair and bright
Which will ever lead aright,
Is God’s word, divine and holy,
Guiding all His children lowly
-: Unto Christ, our Lord and King :-
This lovely, childlike hymn, the first to appear from Grundtvig’s pen, was written in the fall of 1810 when its author was still battling with despair and his mind faltering on the brink of insanity. Against this background the hymn
appears like a ray of sunlight breaking through a clouded sky. And as such it must undoubtedly have come to its author. As an indication of Grundtvig’s simple trust in God, it is noteworthy that another of his most childlike hymns,
“God’s Child, Do Now Rest Thee,” was likewise composed during a similar period of distress that beset him many years later.
For a number of years Grundtvig’s hymn of the Wise Men represented his sole
contribution to hymnody. Other interests engaged his attention and absorbed his
energy. During his years of intense work with the sagas he only occasionally broke his “engagement” with the dead to strike the lyre for the living. In 1815 he translated “In Death’s Strong Bonds Our Savior Lay” from Luther, and “Christ Is
Risen from the Dead” from the Latin. The three hundredth anniversary of the Reformation brought his adaptation of Kingo’s “Like the Golden Sun
Ascending” and translations of Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” and
“The Bells Ring in the Christmastide.” In 1820 he published his now popular “A
Babe Is Born at Bethlehem” from an old Latin-Danish text, and 1824 saw his splendid rendering of “The Old Day Song,” “With Gladness We Hail the Blessed
Day,” and his original “On Its Rock the Church of Jesus Stood Mongst Us a Thousand Years.”
These songs constitute his whole contribution to hymnody from 1810 to 1825.
But the latter year brought a signal increase. In the midst of his fierce battle with the Rationalists he published the first of his really great hymns, a song of comfort to the daughters of Zion, sitting disconsolately at the sickbed of their mother, the church. Her present state may appear so hopeless that her children fear to remember her former glory:
Dares the anxious heart envision
Still its morning dream,
View, despite the world’s derision,
Zion’s sunlit height and stream?
Wields still anyone the power
To repeat her anthems strong,
And with joyful heart embower,
