I wasn’t going to mention this one, because it is indeed “Be Thou My Vision,” (blogged here) but we all were looking at different versions in the comments on a recent post and it struck me that the editors of CWB I made some interesting choices in their text. (ie alt raises is head)
Unlike AOV a few years later they removed “Thou” etc, and went with these lyrics:
1 Lord, be my vision, supreme in my heart,
Bid every rival give way and depart:
You my best thought in the day and the night,
Waking or sleeping, your presence my light.
2 Lord, be my wisdom, and be my true word,
I ever with you and you with me, Lord:
You my great Father and I your true son,
You in me living and I with you one.
3 Lord, be my breastplate, my sword for the fight:
Be my strong armour, for you are my might;
You are my shelter and you my high tower
Raise me to heaven, O Power of my power.
4 I need no riches, nor man’s empty praise:
You my inheritence through all my days;
All of your treasure to me you impart,
High King of heaven, the first in my heart.
5 High King of heaven, when battle is done,
Grant heaven’s joy to me, bright heaven’s sun;
Christ of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my vision, O Ruler of all.
The decision that since the archaism “art” is not allowed as a rhyme for “heart” the second line has to be made to fit “depart” is poor and worse adds to the myriad of variations already out there.
This version seems to be derived from the Living Parish versions.
It has battle (Yeah!!!)
But it’s a really poor adaption. There are some really funny moments, like ‘you and you’, and “me you” – It makes it more confusing and tacky.
Why not go back to the original poem by that Mary Elizabeth Byrne and re versify it instead of editing an edit?
The one thing I like is that it supports the ‘clean’ melody without the hard to sing extra bits that are present in the CWB2 version.
The next hymnal that gets released in Australia should deal with this issue like the Westminster hymnal: They’re wrong.
“It has been felt that the chief defect in Catholic hymn-singing to-day, is the lack of uniformity in the melodies of even the most popular hymns. Each congregation is a law unto itself, and the variants of almost every popular tune are so numerous, that chaos is the result when (at any great Catholic gathering, for instance) different congregations unite in singing, each their own version of the same tune”