1 Sing we of the Golden City,
Pictured in the legends old:
Everlasting light shines o’er it,
Wondrous things of it are told.
Only righteous men and women
Dwell within its gleaming walls,
Wrong is banished from its borders,
Justice reigns through all its halls.
2 We are builders of that City,
All our joys and all our groans
Help to rear its shining ramparts;
All our lives are building-stones.
For that City we must labor,
For its sake bear pain and grief;
In it find the end of living
And the anchor of belief.
3 And the work that we have builded,
Oft with bleeding hands, and tears,
Oft in error, oft in anguish,
Will not perish with our years.
It will last, and shine transfigured,
In the final reign of right;
It will pass into the splendors
Of the City of the Light.
Source: Worship and Song. (Rev. ed.) #211
Adler, Felix, Ph.D. Born in Germany in 1851; taken to New York in 1857; graduated at Columbia College 1870; and Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Literature at Cornell University, 1874-76. He published in 1877 Creed and Deed. His hymn, "Sing we of the golden city" (City of our Hopes) is in The Pilgrim Hymnal, 1904. Sometimes given as "Have you heard of the golden city?"
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, New Supplement (1907)
Go to person page >| First Line: | Sing we of the golden city |
| Title: | The Golden City |
| Author: | Felix Adler (1878) |
| Language: | English |
| Copyright: | Public Domain |
My Starred Hymns