O Worship the King

O worship the King, all glorious above,
And gratefully sing His power and His love;
Our Shield and Defender, the Ancient of Days,
Pavilioned in splendor and girded with praise.

O tell of His might, O sing of His grace,
Whose robe is the light, whose canopy space;
His chariots of wrath the deep thunderclouds form,
And dark is His path on the wings of the storm.

Thy bountiful care what tongue can recite?
It breathes in the air, it shines in the light;
It streams form the hills, it descends to the plain,
And sweetly distills in the dew and the rain.

Frail children of dust, and feeble as frail,
In Thee do we trust, nor find Thee to fail;
Thy mercies how tender! How firm to the end!
Our Maker, Defender, Redeemer and Friend.

This hymn, written and published in 1833 is one of the finest from the early nineteenth century Romantic Era. It has often been called a model hymn for worship. It has few equals in expressive lyrics in the exaltation of the Almighty. Each of the epithets applied to God (King, Shield, Defender, Ancient of Days, Maker, Redeemer, Friend) and the references to His attributes (power, might, grace, bountiful care, love) combine to describe with great eloquence the majesty and praise-worthiness of our God.

Sir Robert Grant was born into a setting of high political life in Bengal, India, in 1779. His father was a respected leader in India and a director of the East India Company. He later became a member of the British Parliament. He was also a zealous leader in the Anglican Church. Like his father, Robert was also a devout and deeply spiritual Christian all of his life. He was greatly loved by the people of India who established a lasting memorial there in the form of a medical college bearing his name.

In 1839, a year after his death in India, his brother had twelve of his poems published in a book entitled Sacred Poems. Although several of these poems received some acceptance, only this text is still in common usage in hymnals today.

The tune for this hymn, "Lyons," first appeared in the second volume of William Gardiner's Sacred Melodies which was published in London in 1815. It was attributed to J. Michael Haydn, the brother of Franz Joseph Haydn. It first appeared in the United States in 1818 in a collection entitled Sacred Melodies by Oliver Shaw.