New Every Morning Is the Love
- Metre
- 8.8.8.8
- Written
- 1822
- Copyright
- Public domain
Lyrics
New every morning is the love
our wakening and uprising prove;
through sleep and darkness safely brought,
restored to life and power and thought.
New mercies, each returning day,
hover around us while we pray;
new perils past, new sins forgiven,
new thoughts of God, new hopes of heaven.
If on our daily course our mind
be set to hallow all we find,
new treasures still, of countless price,
God will provide for sacrifice.
The trivial round, the common task,
will furnish all we need to ask,
room to deny ourselves, a road
to bring us daily nearer God.
Only, O Lord, in thy dear love
fit us for perfect rest above;
and help us, this and every day,
to live more nearly as we pray.
History
‘New every morning is the love’ began life as ‘Morning’, the opening poem of John Keble’s The Christian Year (1827), written on 20 September 1822. The original ran to sixteen stanzas; the compilers of Hymns Ancient & Modern (1861) chose five of them, and their selection has shaped the hymn ever since. It is a quiet hymn about ordinary days: each dawn brings ‘new mercies’, and ‘the trivial round, the common task’ become the very place where God is found, bringing us ‘daily nearer God’. Hymnary.org lists it in nearly four hundred hymnals, with tunes including MELCOMBE, CANONBURY and TRURO.
Keble was born at Fairford, Gloucestershire, in 1792. He won a scholarship to Corpus Christi College in 1806, took a double first in 1810, and was elected a Fellow of Oriel the following year, while still under nineteen. Ordained deacon in 1815, he published The Christian Year in 1827 and was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1831. His Assize Sermon of 1833 was held by John Henry Newman to have given the first start to the Oxford Movement. From 1836 he was parish priest of Hursley for the rest of his life; he died on 29 March 1866 and lies beside his wife in Hursley churchyard.
Performance
This recording by St Martin’s Voices runs to about two and a half minutes: a short organ introduction leads into five verses, closing with a brief organ postlude.
Sources: hymnary.org · hymnology.hymnsam.co.uk · St Martin's Voices recording and Words book (Words_for_5th_Sunday_after_Trinity.docx): 'John Keble (1792-1866)', '(Public Domain)'
About St Martin's Voices
The recording on this page is sung by St Martin's Voices, the professional vocal ensemble based at St Martin-in-the-Fields, the church on Trafalgar Square in London. One of the UK's most versatile professional choirs, they sing for services, concerts and broadcasts — including on BBC radio and Classic FM — and have released a number of acclaimed recordings.
Their hymn recordings are made freely available to Anglican parishes through the Church of England's A Church Near You Resource Hub, produced by Andrew Earis, Director of Music at St Martin-in-the-Fields, in collaboration with the Royal School of Church Music.