“I Vow to Thee, My Country”.
English Patriotic Hymn.
Available on YouTube
English: Royal Arms of England used from 1198 to 1340. Used by the King of England up until King Edward III quartered
the Royal Arms of England with the Ancient Arms of France.
Русский: Щит с Королевским гербом Англии, использовшийся королём Англии с 1198 по 1340 гг.,
когда король Эдуард III объединил его с древним
гербом Франции в четверочастный щит.
English: Gules, three lions passant guardant
in pale or armed and langued azure.
Français: De gueules au trois léopards d’or
armés et lampassés d’azur.
Русский: В червлёном поле три золотые,
лазуревые когтями и языками леопарда.
Date: 20 July 2010.
Source: Own work.
This File is licensed under the
Share Alike 4.0 International licence.
Author: Sodacan
(Wikimedia Commons)
“I Vow To Thee, My Country” is a British Hymn created
in 1921, when a poem by Sir Cecil Spring Rice was
set to music by Gustav Holst.
The origin of the Hymn’s Text is a poem by diplomat Sir Cecil Spring Rice, which he wrote in 1908 or 1912, entitled “Urbs Dei” (“The City of God”) or “The Two Fatherlands”.
The poem described how a Christian owes his loyalties
to both his Homeland and the Heavenly Kingdom.
In 1908, Sir Cecil Spring Rice was posted to the British Embassy in Stockholm. In 1912, he was appointed Ambassador to the United States of America, where he influenced the administration of Woodrow Wilson to abandon neutrality
and join Britain in the War against Germany.
After the United States entered the War, he was recalled to Britain. Shortly before his departure from the U.S. in January 1918, he re-wrote and renamed “Urbs Dei”, significantly altering the first verse to concentrate on the themes of Love and Sacrifice rather than “the noise of battle” and “the thunder of her guns”, creating a more sombre tone in view of the dreadful loss of life suffered in The Great War.
The first verse in both versions invoke Britain
(in the 1912 version) as Britannia with Sword and Shield,
in the second version simply called “My Country”;
the second verse “the Kingdom of Heaven”.
According to Sir Cecil’s grand-daughter, the rewritten
verse of 1918 was never intended to appear alongside
the first verse of the original poem, but was replacing it;
the original first verse is nevertheless sometimes known
as the “rarely-sung middle verse”.
The Text of the original poem was sent by Sir Cecil Spring Rice to William Jennings Bryan in a Letter shortly before his
death in February 1918.
The poem circulated privately for a few years, until it was set to music by Holst, to a tune he adapted from his “Jupiter” [Editor: “The Planets Suite”] to fit the words of the poem.
It was performed as a unison song with Orchestra in the
Early-1920s, and it was finally published as a Hymn in 1925
in The Songs of Praise Hymnal (Number 188).
