Was treue Herzen flehn
Steigt zu des Himmels Höh’n
Aus Nacht zum Licht.
Der unsre Liebe sah,
Der unsre Tränen sah,
Er ist uns huldreich nah,
Verlässt uns nicht.
A fourth stanza, identical with the first, follows.
It was written by the German song writer, Siegfried Augustus Mahlmann, and published in G. W. Fink’s Musikalischer Hausschatz, 1842. The hymn was first sung Nov. 13, 1815, in the presence of the King of Saxony. The hymn was also the inspiration for Samuel F. Smith’s, “My country ’tis of thee.”
The translation was made in 1834 by Charles T. Brooks, while a student at the Divinity School at Cambridge, Mass. It was revised by John Sullivan Dwight, 1813-93, to form our version. Dwight was a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and became a Unitarian minister in Northampton, Mass., but gave up the ministry to devote himself to literature and music. For thirty years he owned and edited Dwight’s Journal of Music.