“Come to me,” saith One, “and, coming,
Be at rest.”
This hymn is often regarded as an original by Neale, but the author was St. Stephen the Sabaite, a monk who received his name from the monastery in which he spent his life, that of St. Sabas, near Bethlehem, overlooking the Dead Sea. St. Stephen, who was born in 725 A.D., had been placed in the monastery at the age of ten years by his uncle. He lived there more than half a century until his death in 794 A.D.
Neale was equally successful in the translation of ancient Latin hymns. Perhaps the most notable is his rendering of Bernard of Cluny’s immortal hymn:
Jerusalem, the golden,
With milk and honey blest!
Beneath thy contemplation
Sink heart and voice oppressed:
I know not, O I know not,
What blissful joys are there,