Wow LISTEN to a Beautiful Hymn Honoring St. Cecilia the Patroness of Church Musicians and Poets

Saint Cecilia is the patroness of music, musicians and poets. Her Feast Day is November 22. Herbert Howells' "A Hymn For St Cecilia", performed by the Merbecke Choir at Southwark Cathdral on 13 July 2013, directed by Huw Morgan, accompanied by Peter Wright. This work is from 1960 and sets a text by Ursula Vaughan Williams.

Hymn - Lyrics below the Video

Sing for the morning's joy, Cecilia, sing, In words of youth and praises of the Spring, Walk the bright colonnades by fountains' spray, And sing as sunlight fills the waking day; Till angels, voyaging in upper air, Pause on a wing and gather the clear sound Into celestial joy, wound and unwound, A silver chain, or golden as your hair. 

Sing for your loves of heaven and of earth, In words of music, and each word a truth; Marriage of heart and longings that aspire, A bond of roses, and a ring of fire. Your summertime grows short and fades away, Terror must gather to a martyr's death; But never tremble, the last indrawn breath Remembers music as an echo may.

 Through the cold aftermath of centuries, Cecilia's music dances in the skies; Lend us a fragment of the immortal air, That with your choiring angels we may share, A word to light us thro' time-fettered night, Water of life, or rose of paradise, So from the earth another song shall rise To meet your own in heaven's long delight.