Is Love Your Song?
The hymn My song is love unknown appears as #458 In our hymnal. The tune, Love Unknown, by John Ireland (1879-1962) is gorgeous; the text by Samuel Crossman (1624-1683) is achingly beautiful as well. Each stanza has eight lines. Concerning the poetic form, each stanza begins with a set of four lines of six syllables, with a rhyme (or near rhyme) scheme of A-B-A-B. The second set has four lines of four syllables, with a rhyme scheme of C-D-D-C. This stunning work provides us with a perfect devotional, heading into Holy Week. Examine the sixth stanza; might the songwriter have meant this to be the testimony of Joseph of Arimathea? Love can be your song. Let Christ’s love be your song today.
My song is love unknown,
my Savior's love to me;
love to the loveless shown,
that they might lovely be.
O who am I,
That for my sake
my Lord should take
frail flesh, and die?
He came from His blest throne
salvation to bestow;
but men made strange, and none
|the longed-for Christ would know:
But O my friend,
my friend indeed,
who at my need
his life did spend.
Sometimes they strew his way,
and his sweet praises sing;
resounding all the day
hosannas to their King:
Then "Crucify!"
is all their breath,
and for his death
they thirst and cry.
Why, what hath my Lord done?
What makes this rage and spite?
He made the lame to run,
he have the blind their sight.
Sweet injuries!
Yet they at these
themselves displease,
and ‘gainst him rise.
They rise and needs will have
my dear Lord made away;
a murderer they save,
the Prince of Life they slay.
Yet steadfast he
to suffering goes,
that he his foes
from thence might free.
In life, no house, no home
my Lord on earth might have;
in death, no friendly tomb,
but what a stranger gave.
What may I say?
Heav'n was his home;
but mine the tomb
wherein he lay.
Here might I stay and sing,
no story so divine:
never was love, dear King,
never was grief like thine.
this is my friend,
in whose sweet praise
I all my days
could gladly spend.
