Bright the Vision That Delighted

Lyrics

Bright the vision that delighted
once the sight of Judah's seer;
sweet the countless tongues united
to entrance the prophet's ear.

Round the Lord in glory seated
cherubim and seraphim
filled his temple, and repeated
each to each the alternate hymn:

'Lord, thy glory fills the heaven;
earth is with its fulness stored;
unto thee be glory given,
holy, holy, holy, Lord.'

Heaven is still with glory ringing,
earth takes up the angels' cry,
'Holy, holy, holy,' singing,
'Lord of hosts, the Lord most high.'

With his seraph train before him,
with his holy Church below,
thus unite we to adore him,
bid we thus our anthem flow:

'Lord, thy glory fills the heaven;
earth is with its fulness stored;
unto thee be glory given,
holy, holy, holy, Lord.'

History

Richard Mant (1776-1848) wrote this hymn in 1837, publishing it in his Ancient Hymns from the Roman Breviary (1837), No. 100, in four stanzas of eight lines under the heading 'Hymn commemorative of the "Thrice Holy"'. Mant, born in Southampton and educated at Winchester and Trinity College, Oxford, was successively Bishop of Killaloe (1820), Bishop of Down and Connor (1823) and Bishop of Dromore (1842), and is known chiefly for his translations from the Latin.

The hymn is a paraphrase of the prophet's vision in Isaiah 6 — the Lord enthroned, attended by seraphim crying 'Holy, holy, holy' — the scene from which the church's Sanctus derives. Hymnary.org's scriptural references for the text also include Psalm 72:19, Ezekiel 1, Colossians 1:11-20 and Revelation 4, where the vision of ceaseless heavenly praise returns.

The hymn is rarely sung in its full original form — the third stanza is usually omitted — and it circulates in several rearrangements, the best known beginning 'Round the Lord in glory seated', which repurposes the first half of the second stanza as a refrain. Hymnary.org records the text in 49 hymnals.

Performance

The tune is LAUS DEO, also known as REDHEAD NO. 46, by Richard Redhead (1820-1901), from his Church Hymn Tunes (1853); Hymnary.org records it in some 59 hymnals. It shares the text's 8.7.8.7 metre.

As a Sanctus hymn — earth's answer to the unceasing 'Holy, holy, holy' of the heavenly host — it sits naturally in services of praise and adoration, and especially wherever worship turns to the holiness of God.

Sources: hymnary.org