1 Thou from the cradle to the grave
For us to pain condemned,
A grateful heart Thy people give
To praise their suffering friend—
That Friend who longed for man to die,
While yet in Mary’s womb;
That God who took humanity,
To lay it in the tomb.
2 He comes a babe, though Lord of all,
In cold and want to lie;
His cradle is the oxen’s stall,
The straw His drapery:
’Tis love that makes the Innocent
The pains of guilt to bear,
The Giver of the law content
Its penalty to share.
3 That precious blood which gently flows
And speaks the law obeyed,
Foreshadoweth His dying woes
A little while delayed.
The sword that slays the sucklings now
Unsheathèd must remain,
To pierce His heart and lay Him low
With those already slain.
4 His chosen race their God expel—
An exile poor He flies;
In heathen lands He seeks to dwell
Who made the earth and skies.
O King of suffering, King of love,
All praise be paid to Thee,
With Father, Spirit, God above,
Eternal Trinity.
Source: The Cyber Hymnal #8396
Santeüil, Jean-Baptiste de, was born in Paris of a good family on May 12, 1630. He was one of the regular Canons of St. Victor, at Paris, and, under the name of Santolius Victorinus, was distinguished as a writer of Latin poetry. Many of his hymns appeared in the Cluniac Breviary 1686, and the Paris Breviaries 1680 and 1736, and several have been translated into English, and are in common use in Great Britain and America. He was very jocose in disposition and singular in his habits. When on a journey he died at Dijon, Aug. 5, 1697. His Hymni Sacri et Novi were published at Paris in 1689, and again, enlarged, in 1698. [George Arthur Crawford, M.A.]
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
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