Advent
Hymn 37.
Great God, what do I see and hear?
¶Choose your part under Play voice to hear it alone, or let all four sound and sing yours. Concert key moves the whole hymn up or down to suit your voice.
Opening the music…
The Words
1Great God, what do I see and hear?
The end of things created:
The Judge of all men doth appear
On clouds of glory seated:
The trumpet sounds, the graves restore
The dead which they contained before;
Prepare, my soul, to meet Him.
2The dead in Christ are first to rise
At that last trumpet's sounding;
Caught up to meet Him in the skies,
With joy their Lord surrounding;
No gloomy fears their souls dismay;
His presence sheds eternal day
On those prepared to meet Him.
3The ungodly, filled with guilty fears,
Behold His wrath prevailing;
In woe they rise, but all their tears
And sighs are unavailing:
The day of grace is past and gone;
Trembling they stand before His throne,
All unprepared to meet Him.
4Great Judge, to Thee our prayers we pour,
In deep abasement bending;
O shield us through that last dread hour,
Thy wondrous love extending:
May we, in this our trial day,
With faithful hearts Thy word obey,
And thus prepare to meet Thee. Amen.
The Page It Came From
Where It Comes From
Read note by note from Hymns Ancient and Modern (Novello, London, 1861), and checked against the printed page. See that page in the scan of the book at the Internet Archive: open the page page 2.
First published in London in 1861. Every tune, harmony and text in it was printed by 1861, so all its writers died long before 1966, and the book is out of copyright in India and the USA.