An Office Hymn for Easter Eve

Over the Christmas break, I have been going through old books, to discard some and re-read others. In several, I have found folded notes of attempts at hymns that I had forgotten for decades. Here is a hymn to be sung at Vespers of Good Friday and on Holy Saturday.

I must have worked on this when I was at Mirfield (1982-84), where the Community of the Resurrection relied on the seminarian students of the College to sing the offices and liturgies of Holy Week and Easter while many of the Fathers were absent preaching in parishes. Following the custom in the Divine Office of the Liturgy of the Hours (though not in the classic Roman office, or the monastic office that Mirfield drew on to supplement the daily office of the Book of Common Prayer), there was an office hymn for Holy Saturday. It appears to be a version of the hymn used in The Divine Office, provided by Stanbrook Abbey ((c) 1974) - His cross stands empty in a world grown silent. An inclusive language version ((c) 1995) is included in Hymns for Prayer and Praise (Canterbury Press for the Panel of Monastic Musicians, Norwich 1996) at number 155. The Stanbrook hymn's metre is 11.8.11.8. While Stanbrook has its own Mode 3 melody for it, there appear to be few other reasonably known tunes (if there are any at all) that the unfamiliar form of verse may be sung to. I wonder, therefore, if the slip of photocopied typed text of a similar text, As earth is still, the empty Cross, was Mirfield's attempt at a version that could be sung to a Long Metre tune (8.8.8.8) with little practice. The tune given is a mode 1 melody from the Antiphonale Romanum in the English Hymnal at number 237.

I have kept that slip since my student days, when, in 1984, I was responsible as Precentor for music in the College chapel, the execution of the Gregorian chant at offices by the students, and especially at Holy Week and Easter. I chose the hymns, but not the Office Hymns, which were as set in the Community of the Resurrection's Daily Office. So I am pretty certain that As earth is still is not my own adaptation. I don't know where else it may have come from. If any one can shed any light, I should be interested to know.

Here is the 1984 Mirfield text, which I am supposing to be a compression of the Stanbrook Abbey hymn:

As earth is still, the empty Cross
Accounts the gain redeeming loss
Through hours of anguish, fear and dread,
While Christ descends to wake the dead.

He summons Adam and his seed;
His own, long captive held, are freed.
He claims the dead for to life regained,
Brings light where night eternal reigned.

Confessing Christ Who bore the cost
Who losing life so found the lost,
We praise You, Holy Trinity,
Restoring in eternity. Amen.

Evidently, I thought this unsatisfactory and reworked it, adding a further verse. From the many attempts at revised lines, here is the result:

In silence stands the empty Cross
And tells of gain redeeming loss:
Now earth in anguish waits in dread
While Christ descends to wake the dead.

First light, O Christ, to pierce the gloom,
Your dawning rise shall burst the Tomb;
First fruit of those that lay asleep,
A harvest in the morning reap.

You summon Adam and his seed;
Your own, long captive held, are freed.
You claim the dead to life regained,
Bring light where night eternal reigned.

Confessing You that bore the cost,
and losing life restored the lost:
with Father and the Spirit, Three,
One God, we praise eternally. Amen.

I gladly acknowledge the copyright and protection of the original by the Nuns of Stanbrook Abbey. I would like to acknowledge the possible editors at Mirfield. Hoping and assuming that I have their permission to share this old exercise of mine, I suppose I had better say that the adaptations and additions I have made are copyright to me (c) 1984 and 2020.