King of glory. We call out to you,
Pleading for mercy, praying for grace.
You are the one who can set the soul free, 5
The gift you sent by your holy hand
To dwell in this humble house of flesh.
But where will it go, O Lord of angels,
If you do not release the soul from its sins
By your righteous power, your just mercy? 10
Who is in heaven:
You are in heaven our sheltering hope,
The brightest of joys. The glorious hosts
Bow down before you, bearer of bliss,
Calling out to Christ with a clarion voice: 15
“Holy are you, holy forever,
King of all the angels in heaven.
Your judgments are just, your righteous reach
Extends to us all as we bow before you,
Awaiting our desserts according to our deeds. 20
It will go well for one who works your will.”
Hallowed be your name:
Your name is noble, sanctified everywhere
In earthly tongues, seventy-two in number.
Ancient books say that the Lord of angels 25
Created custom and habit for all nations.
You mold our manners, shape our forms.
Men honor your works with words and deeds.
All of creation calls out to Christ,
Extolling the glory of the living Lord— 30
It’s in their nature, embedded in their being.
Your name is honored over all the world.
Your kingdom come:
Come grant us mercy, Ruler of all,
And gather us into your embracing arms. 35
Grant us a place in the kingdom of heaven,
O righteous Judge, where we may discover
In the happiest of homes eternal life.
There we shall find peace and love,
Kinship and comfort, mercy and mirth, 40
The brightness of vision, the voices of angels.
In that bright homeland, songs of your praise
And power will be heard, and the might of God
Will be made manifest as a consolation to all.
Bless us, O Lord, and bear us to bliss. 45
Your will be done:
Let your will be done as you are the Lord,
Our mighty Ruler, eternally revealed
Throughout the world, our righteous Judge,
Our steadfast Counselor across the earth. 50
Your throne is high and gathered in grandeur,
Noble and eternal, as your Father fashioned it.
You sit in honor at your own right hand,
Two persons in one, both Father and Son.
Majesty of kings, you offer us aid 55
And raise your voice above all creation.
Your glorious word will always be heard
As you gladden the host, an army of angels,
With protecting power and guardian grace.
About your throne thousands of voices 60
In a chorus of angels sing out your name.
As it is in heaven:
High up in heaven, a majesty of the faithful,
Servants of Christ, mighty and eternal,
Pure and appointed, are praising the Lord, 65
Praying for mercy for all of mankind.
Our radiant Ruler, shining in glory,
You grant them this gift, this eternal grace
Since you are benevolent to all the world.
Let us lift up our voices in praise of the Lord 70
For his care and compassion, his unending love.
Lord, you are the exalted emperor of heaven.
So too on earth:
You are the Ruler of everyone on earth,
The head and help of all great kings, 75
A holy physician, a compassionate healer,
Righteous and firm, generous and just.
You have shaped and sustained all living creatures,
Dividing them up and delivering them all
To their proper places according to their kinds. 80
You have given each one its mold and meaning,
Its name and nature, its being and blessing,
And have offered your mercy to the children of men.
Our daily bread:
With peace and love, you send your followers 85
A precious gift, their daily bread,
The bounty of earth to sate and sustain them,
And after life’s labors, you promise them more,
The bread of life, the hope of heaven,
Your Father’s kingdom, that was and is 90
And ever shall be, before beginning,
After ending, the happiest of homes—
If we seek the truth and strive for righteousness.
Give us this day:
Lord, give us today, your precious gifts, 95
Your strength of spirit, your mending mercy.
Incline our thoughts, our hopes and dreams,
So that we may faithfully work your will.
Let the Holy Spirit have a home in our hearts.
Deliver our souls into your sheltering hands, 100
Our blessed Lord abounding in glory.
And forgive us our debts:
Forgive us our sins so we are not ashamed,
O Lord, when you sit in judgment upon us
As all of us born of man and woman 105
Rise up from our graves in the cold ground,
Our crumbling bones and rotting flesh
Growing whole again as we head for home.
Then all of our deeds will be revealed,
Both better and worse. We’ll recognize 110
Everything we’ve ever done in this world—
Nothing will be hidden from the eyes of God.
The witnesses of the world will be gathered there,
The inhabitants of earth, of heaven and hell.
Terror and torment will stalk the land. 115
Some will find favor in the eyes of the Lord,
Entering the eternal halls of heaven;
Some will find horror in the thrall of Satan,
Falling suddenly into the abyss of hell.
Judgment will be based on the lives we led 120
When our minds were whole, our bodies strong.
As we forgive us our debtors:
But the living Lord will set our souls free,
As we must also learn to forgive
The miserable people who sin against us. 125
And lead us not into temptation:
Let no evil ones deceive or seduce us,
Drawing our souls downward in temptation
To the blazing abyss, the eternal flames,
Even though we have offended you, Lord, 130
With idle thoughts and foolish speech,
With wicked sins both day and night.
We are blind to the truth and have lost our way—
We break your commandments night and day.
We pray for forgiveness, pleading for mercy. 135
Do not let the living handiwork you’ve made
Perish so shamefully at the end of days.
But deliver us from evil:
Absolve us from sin, free us from evil.
We are all in need of God’s forgiveness 140
For we have sinned and are lost in misery,
Living in shame. We praise you, Lord,
And beg for mercy. You are the Savior,
The righteous Redeemer, at once revealed
To the living and the dead as the noble Son, 145
The eternal Creator. You cradle the world
In your holy hands, enfolding us all
In your embracing power, your endless mercy.
Such is the grandeur of our glorious king!
Amen: 150
So let it be as you would wish it,
Our mighty Ruler, our righteous Judge.
We raise up our praise-songs in a clarion voice
To the God of angels, our beloved Lord:
You are gathered in glory both now and forever. 155
THE GLORIA I
See the previous headnotes for a discussion of the manuscript, MS 201 of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. This is the first and longer of two OE doxology poems (see Gloria II below for the shorter one). This version occurs in two places—both at the end of the Corpus Christi manuscript poems above and as part of the poems from the Office in MS Junius 121, which are included below in this collection. Keefer bases her edited text on the best readings of both manuscripts and notes that, like The Lord’s Prayer II, this poem “expands substantially on its liturgical original, but while the expansions are elegant, they are also orthodox … [so that] this kind of expansion is logical and sensible, didactic in its sentiment, somewhat creative but in no way startlingly so, and ultimately not enterprising in the scope of its vision” (2010, 99–100). This poem and the following three poetic texts below (The Lord’s Prayer III, The Creed, and Fragments of Psalms) are part of the Old English Office, described by Bradley:
Bodleian MS Junius 121 is one of a small group of related MSS which were evidently compiled and copied at Worcester about the time of the Norman Conquest. The codex contains documents of which the broad purpose was to regulate the government, liturgical practice and spiritual discipline of the English (Benedictine) monasteries, and perhaps of the English church more widely. Amid the penitentials, confessionals, canon, polities, homilies and pastoral letters occurs a text which has come to be called The OE Benedictine Office—with only approximate accuracy, since the work is not explicitly related to the Rule of St Benedict, nor does it set out to present a complete act of worship. It is in fact a rendering, not in Latin, but in OE prose and verse, of parts of the Latin liturgy of six of the Hours into which the monastic day’s worship (the opus Dei, “God’s work”) was divided. (536)
For more on the role of the English Benedictine Reform movement, see Drout (2006, chapters 3 and 4) and Ure (58 ff.). For a complete edition of the Benedictine Office, see Ure and also Jones; for a text and translation of the Latin and OE service of Prime, see Thomson and also Griffiths. Jones, however, argues that “monks and secular clergy celebrated slightly different versions of the daily office, and while some features of [the] compilation in Junius 121 do suggest a monastic or ‘Benedictine’ background, others seem to point to a secular one,” and he prefers the term “Junius Office” (284–85). In the translation below, the lines originally in Latin are printed in italics; the lines originally in OE, in Roman type.
The Gloria I
Glory:
Let glory and praise be proclaimed to you
Among all peoples, almighty God—
Thanksgiving and affection, might and mercy,
The love of our hearts, the devotion of our minds, 5
Our steadfast commitment, our firm faith—
For you control the width of the world
From the forces of earth to the powers of air.
You hold the whole of creation from wind-way
To cloud-curl in the curve of your hands, 10
Ruling everything with a righteous love.
To the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:
Father of compassion, Shepherd of the soul,
You are Lord of light, Sustainer of life,
Separated from sin like your only Son, 15
Pure in nature, spotless in form,
Bold and blessed, King over all,
Teacher of texts, Comforter of hearts,
Saver of souls, and the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning: 20
In the beginning, the Lord of mankind
Was brightness and beauty, radiating grace
Into each moment’s making of the waking world.
You revealed to us this eternal truth:
You shaped sea and sky, heaven and earth, 25
The living land and its countless creatures,
Crafting each animal according to its kind,
Creating life for six days, setting aside
The seventh for rest, giving us the gift
Of holy Sunday as an aid to us all. 30
The Son’s day is kept by all Christians
Who care for our customs and the Lord’s command.
That day is honored with the Lord’s name.
Is now and ever shall be:
Now and forever you reveal your forms, 35
Their embodied shapes, the craft of creation,
Through your wise purpose and infinite power,
A wielding of wonder all over the world.
The handiwork of God endures forever,
Grows to your bidding, gathers to a greatness, 40
As choirs of angels exalt your name
With the purest voices, as scripture unfolds
Your goodness and grace, your holy purpose,
While down here on earth we gratefully sing:
“Praise God in his glory, give thanks for his love.” 45
Forever and ever:
Forever and ever, the King in his glory
Abides and rules this wondrous world
With his chosen servants, a host of angels,
Those holy spirits, mighty and magnificent. 50
His gifts endure—the promise of peace,
The gratitude of souls, his endless embrace,
The infinite life in his loving heart.
Heaven is alive with a burgeoning joy,
The unending grace of your eternal words. 55
Your majesty shines over all middle-earth.
Your power is revealed in your words and works.
All things testify to your making might.
Amen:
Our beloved Lord, we all say truly, 60
That through your clean conception and pure birth,
Your sinless nature, you are rightfully King,
Pure and powerful, mighty and majestic.
You revealed as much when you shaped creation,
Making mankind, breathing life in our bodies, 65
Securing our souls, offering us speech,
Language and understanding, the miracle of a mind,
And the fertile gift of generations to come.
Yet the mightiest wonder is yourself, Christ!
THE LORD’S PRAYER III
This poem is part of the Office poems in MS Junius 121 (see headnote to The Gloria I above). This version of The Lord’s Prayer is longer than the version in the Exeter Book and shorter than the Corpus Christi version, The Lord’s Prayer II, above. Dobbie considers this version to be “a clear, straight-forward paraphrase, and is probably to be regarded as the best of all the Anglo-Saxon verse translations of Latin liturgical texts” (1942, lxxvii), though Keefer judges it “midway between the Exeter Lord’s Prayer [The Lord’s Prayer I] and the Corpus Lord’s Prayer [The Lord’s Prayer II] in terms of its sophistication,” noting that it is “more than a simple, lightly ornamented articulation of the Latin original but far less than a creative series of digressions around the Pater Noster prayer” (2010, 72). Keefer notes that the prayer derives from Matthew 6:7–14 and Luke 11:2–4 and that it was “incorporated into the liturgy of the young Church from its earliest days” (2010, 22).
The Lord’s Prayer III
Our Father who is in heaven:
Father of mankind, I pray for your aid,
Pleading for comfort and consolation.
Hear me, O Lord, from your home in heaven.
Hallowed be your name: 5
May your name be hallowed, savior Christ,
Firm in our minds, fast in our heart’s hold.
Your kingdom come:
May your kingdom come to all of mankind,
Almighty God, our righteous Judge. 10
May our faith in you find a glorious home
In our hearts and minds throughout our days.
Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven:
Let your will be worked out among us
In the hearths and homes of this earthly kingdom 15
As clearly and purely as in the glory of heaven,
Radiant with rapture, bright and beautiful,
Adorned with joy, now and forever.
Give us this day our daily bread:
Give us today, God of all men, 20
High King of heaven, our beloved Lord,
This loaf of bread that you send to sustain us,
The spiritual food to save our souls,
The bread called Christ, our pure Lord.
And forgive us our debts: 25
Forgive us our sins, Guardian of mankind.
Remit our wrongs of body and mind,
Our wicked words, our evil deeds,
As we often offend against you, God,
Wounding again our compassionate Lord. 30
As we forgive our debtors:
Likewise we forgive those here on earth
Whose sins often offend against us.
And for the sake of earning eternal life,
We mean to hold nothing against them 35
For their deceitful works, their perverse deeds.
And lead us not into temptation:
Lead us not into temptation and torment,
Sorrow and suffering, wickedness and woe.
Carry and keep us firm and faithful, 40
Christ our Savior, lest in our weakness
We fail and fall, forgoing your grace,
Missing your mercy because of our malice.
But deliver us from evil:
Deliver us from evil of our enemies 45
And free us from the iniquity of our own hearts.
We give thanks to you, Lord of angels,
Prince of victories, and we glory in this—
That through the power of your eternal mercy,
You have saved us from hell’s endless torment. 50
Amen:
So be it.
THE CREED
This poem is part of the Junius Office poems (see headnote to The Gloria I above). Drawing upon the works of Kelly on early Christian creeds (1955, 1972), Keefer summarizes the medieval tradition of their use as follows:
It is important to realize that catechesis—the teaching and examining of candidates for baptism—gave rise to the formulation of those statements of faith called “creeds” (from the Latin credo, “I believe”), rather than the other way around. Baptism, worship, preaching, catechetical instruction, anti-heretical and anti-pagan polemics, and exorcism all provided occasions for giving concrete expression, along lines determined by the needs of the moment, to the cardinal articles of Christian belief. Oft-repeated legend had it that the twelve apostles gathered together after Pentecost (Acts 2:1–47) to establish a common basis for their preaching, and that each contributed to a general statement of faith. So from the very earliest period of the development of organized Christianity, statements of belief were known and used to help the Church grow.
The Complete Old English Poems Page 112