Scripture References:
st. 1 = Ps. 34:1
st. 2 = Rev. 5:6-14
st. 3 = Ps. 19:1
ref. = Heb. 13:15
This litany of praise to Christ was translated from an anonymous
German text, "Beim frühen Morgenlicht," thought to date from around 1800 (perhaps even the mid-1700s). The German text was first published in Sebastian Portner's Katholisches Gesangbuch (1828) in fourteen stanzas of couplets with a refrain line.
Edward Caswall's English translation, prepared from one of several variants of the text, was published in six stanzas in Henry Formby's Catholic Hymns (1854). Caswall (b. Yately, Hampshire, England, 1814; d. Edgebaston, Birmingham, England, 1878) published another eight stanzas in his Masque of Mary (1858). Like most other hymnals, the Psalter Hymnal provides a text taken from various parts of the Caswall translation.
A morning hymn (st. 1) as well as an evening hymn (st. 4), the text presents praise to Christ from angels and human creatures (st. 2) and from the elements of earth to the farthest reach of the cosmos (st. 3). In fact, this text is for all times and places: "Be this the eternal song"!
Caswell, the son of an Anglican clergyman, studied for the priesthood at Brasenose College, Oxford, England. He was ordained in 1839 and served the church in Stratford-sub-Castle but resigned his position in 1847. By this time he had become deeply involved in the Oxford Movement, an Anglican movement with strong Roman Catholic leanings. In 1847 Caswell and his wife traveled to Rome, where they were received into the Roman Catholic Church. After his wife's death Caswell became a Roman Catholic priest and joined the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in Birmingham, a group supervised by John Henry Newman, an earlier Roman Catholic convert from the Church of England. Caswell then devoted himself to two main tasks–serving the poor of Birmingham and writing and translating hymns, mainly from the Latin office-books and from German sources. Many of his translations were published in his Lyra Catholica (1849) and, with revisions, in Hymns and Poems (1873).
Liturgical Use:
Many occasions as a hymn of praise to Christ; a hymn for all seasons and all times of worship–morning, midday, or evening; could also frame the day of worship with stanzas 1-3 used at the beginning of morning worship and stanzas 4-5 used as a doxology for evening worship.
--Psalter Hymnal Handbook, 1987
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When morning gilds the skies, by E. Caswall, first published in H. Formby's Catholic Hymns, London, N. D., 1854 [approbation May 3, 1853], p. 44, in 6 stanzas of 4 lines and double refrain. In Caswall's Masque of Mary, 1858, 8 stanzas were added, and thus in his Hymns & Poems, 1873, p. 155, in 28 stanzas of 2 lines and refrain, entitled "The Praises of Jesus," the first line being given as "Gelobt sey Jesus Christ," which, as will be seen above, is the original refrain. The full text is given unaltered as No. 269 in the Appendix to the Hymnal Noted, 3rd edition, 1867.
This hymn has attained considerable popularity, and is found in varying centos, as in Hymns Ancient & Modern, 1868-75; Hymnary, 1872; Baptist Hymnal, 1879; Scottish Free Church Hymn Book, 1882; Border's Collection, 1884; and in America in the Baptist Praise Book, 1871; Evangelical Hymnal, N. Y., 1880; Laudes Domini, 1884, and others. Generally it appears under its original first line, but in the People's Hymnal, 1867, it is divided into two parts, No. 446 beginning "The night becomes as day," which is stanza xi. of the 1828, and stanza xx. of the text of 1873. [Rev. James Mearns, M.A.]
-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
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