[24] 123 Brightest And Best Of The Sons Of The Morning

‘Brightest and best of the sons of the morning,
---Dawn on our darkness, and lend us thine aid;
Star of the east, the horizon adorning,
---Guide where our infant Redeemer is laid.

Cold on the cradle the dew-drops are shining;
---Low lies his head with the beasts of the stall;
Angels adore him in slumber reclining,
---Maker, and Monarch, and Saviour of all.

Say, shall we yield him, in costly devotion,
---Odours of Edom, and offerings divine,
Gems of the mountain and pearls of the ocean,
---Myrrh from the forest or gold from the mine?

Vainly we offer each ample oblation;
---Vainly with gifts would his favour secure;
Richer by far is the heart’s adoration;
---Dearer to God are the prayers of the poor.

Brightest and best of the sons of the morning,
---Dawn on our darkness, and lend us thine aid;
Star of the east, the horizon adorning,
---Guide where our infant redeemer is laid.’

As an early Christmas present I give to you this whole carol, and it’s one of the most beautiful we’ve come across. Read through it carefully as if it were a poem and you’ll see how perfectly it unfolds.

The first four verses are distinct blocks presenting different, clear ideas, with the very final one being a recap of the first. This first verse is held together by ideas of light; Christ as the dawning sun (note the intentional homonym of son/sun in the first line), and then the light of the Guiding Star acting as a beacon to Bethlehem. Interestingly it’s referred to as ‘the star of the east’, when the Wise Men, according to tradition, were from the east themselves, which must have meant that the star appeared as a western one to them. It’ all about perspective. I’m sure that the carol-writer, Reginald Heber, meant that from our perspective the Nativity is in the east, thus our own pilgrimage to Christ is one eastwards.

If the first verse is the glorious arrival of Jesus, then the second is one of those ubiquitous ones about the quiet aftermath. What I love here is the zooming-out throughout the verse (remember the one long camera shot in 82 Long Ago Prophets Knew, rushing into the stable? This is kind-of the opposite), which starts off soft and low, with the dew-drops on the manger. Practicalities time: it must’ve been freezing in the ramshackle shack, hence the swaddling clothes I guess. The next line draws out to the immediate onlookers, the ‘beasts of the stall’ (do the human onlookers fall into that category? See here). Then we zoom out to include the heavens where angels are watching over him, and finally we reach the most far-reaching ‘camera shot’. In a mystical mind-bender, we find that out here in the realms of incomprehensible ideas like ‘Maker’, ‘Monarch’ and ‘Saviour’ is Jesus, who was exactly who we started off with in this verse! We’ve come full circle! It’s as if we’re on Google Maps; having peered in through the stable window on Street-View we give a cursory scroll of the mouse wheel to zoom out to Global-View, finding that the self-same image is projected on the stars! Forgive the preponderance of exclamation marks. It is Christmas Eve, after all…

Verse 3 is the most beautifully worded description of ‘costly devotion’ that you’re likely to find. Bear in mind that ‘odours of Edom’ is phrase probably referring to frankincense, to go with the myrrh and gold in the fourth line. Notice the rapidly changing colours in lines 3 and 4; red rubies, the blue sea, green trees and yellow gold. Such is the splendour of all that we offer. Naturally, the next verse is the ‘don’t give him things, give your heart’ verse, which all good gift-giving carols include.

And then we have the recap of the first verse. This carol kind of trailed off, didn’t it? We were going great-guns, and then we had ‘love is better than gold’ followed by a verse we’ve already sung. Shame. Or is it? Obviously it isn’t, ‘cos I’ve got a few paragraphs left…

When a writer has put so much attention into the crafting of his words, he needs a reason to repeat them. This is not an arbitrary re-hashing of the first verse, but neither does it really sum up the carol, nor does it carry new meaning now that we’ve sung more verses. I’d suggest that it has to do with proportion. I don’t mean to go all Dan Brown on you, but there’s a structural clue that Heber has left for us. By giving us a verse that we didn’t need at the end, he is asking us to solve the puzzle.

Do you know about the Golden Section? If you don’t, or you need a refresher, take a look at the Wikipedia article here. When artists of any kind use this intentionally to plan the structure of their works, they place something important at roughly the 62% mark. This could be 62% of the way along a painting (check out the Mona Lisa), or through a piece of music (try Debussy), or even along the vertical beam of a crucifix.

62% through this carol is the gap between verses 3 and 4. This means Heber is highlighting the change from verse 3 to verse 4, he’s saying ‘look again, here is what’s important’. He adds that extra repeated verse to put the Golden Section emphasis onto the changeover, heightening the meaning of these verses.

I hope this goes some way to show how much care and attention has gone into the writing of this carol. Indeed, I hope that the whole Barabbas’ Carol project has done the same for the rest of our carolling heritage. Every year we blow the dust off these musical relics and recant them because it is the done thing. The act of writing a carol is to mirror the work of Jesus – it is to show mankind the glory of God in a form that is comprehensible. Perhaps me writing these missives is a second-hand way of doing the same thing. Goodnight for now, I’ll give you your last present tomorrow. Have a great Christmas night, and thanks be to God!