Jerusalem high tower thy glorious walls

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Jerusalem high tower thy glorious walls

Author: Johannes Matthaeus Meyfart; Translator: William Rollinson Whittingham (1860)
Published in 21 hymnals

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Representative Text

1 Jerusalem! high tower thy glorious walls,
Would God I were in thee!
Desire of thee my longest heart enthralls,
Desire at home to be:
Wide from the world outleaping,
O'er hill, and vale, and plain,
My soul's strong wing is sweeping,
Thy portals to attain.

2 O gladsome day and yet more gladsome hour!
When shall that hour have come,
When my rejoicing soul its own free pow'r
May use in going home?
Itself to Jesus giving
In trust to His own hand,
To dwell among the living
In that blest Father-land.

3 Great fastness thou of honour! thee I greet:
Throw wide thy gracious gate,
An entrance free to give these longing feet,
At last released, though late,
From wretchedness and sinning.
And life's long, weary way;
And now, of God's gift, winning
Eternity's bright day.

4 Unnumbered choirs before the Lamb's high throne
There shout the jubilee,
With loud resounding peal and sweetest tone,
In blissful ecstasy:
A hundred thousand voices
Take up the wondrous song;
Eternity rejoices
God's praises to prolong.

Source: The Church Hymnal: containing hymns approved and set forth by the general conventions of 1892 and 1916; together with hymns for the use of guilds and brotherhoods, and for special occasions (Rev. ed) #600

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Author: Johannes Matthaeus Meyfart

Meyfart, Johann Matthäus, was born Nov. 9, 1590 at Jena, during a visit which his mother (wife of Pastor Meyfart of Wablwinkel, near Waltershausen, Gotha) was paying to her father. He studied at the Universities of Jena (M.A. 1611; D.D. 1624) and Wittenberg, and was thereafter for some time adjunct of the philosophical faculty at Jena. In 1616, he was appointed professor in the Gymnasium at Coburg and in 1623 director; and during his residence at Coburg was a great moral power. When his colleagues in the Gymnasium made a complaint to the government regarding a dissertation (De disciplina ecclesiastica) which he published in 1633, he accepted the offer of the professorship of theology in the revived University of Erfurt. He entered on his w… Go to person page >

Translator: William Rollinson Whittingham

Whittingham, William Rollinson, D.D., LL.D., was born in New York, Dec. 2, 1805. He received his early education from his mother, and subsequently graduated at the General Theological Seminary, New York, 1825. He was for some time Rector of St. Mark's, Orange, New Jersey; then of St. Luke's, New York; and afterwards Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the General Seminary, N. Y., 1835. In 1840 he was consecrated Bishop of Maryland, and died in 1879. For talent, learning, and character, Bishop Whittingham is allowed to be one of the great American Bishops, if not the greatest. His contributions to hymnology were Specimens of a Church Hymnal, Baltimore, Dec. 1865, and two translations from the German, which appeared in Hymns for Church an… Go to person page >

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Text Information

Text Information

First Line:	Jerusalem high tower thy glorious walls
German Title:	Jerusalem, du hochgebaute Stadt
Author:	Johannes Matthaeus Meyfart
Translator:	William Rollinson Whittingham (1860)
Meter:	10.6.10.6.7.6.7.6
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain