Advent
Lo! He Comes With Clouds Descending
- Words:
- John Cennick, 1752. Altered by Charles Wesley, 1758, alt.
- Music:
- 'Helmsley' attr. Thomas Olivers, 1765.
- Setting:
- "The English Hymnal", 1906, alt.
- Metre:
- 8 7 8 7 12 7
- 1Lo! He comes with clouds descending,Once for ev'ry sinner slain;Thousand thousand saints attending,Swell the triumph of His train:Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!God appears on earth to reign.
- 2Ev'ry eye shall now behold HimRobed in dreadful majesty;Those who set at naught and sold Him,Pierced and nailed Him to the tree,Deeply wailing, deeply wailing, deeply wailing,Shall the true Messiah see.
- 3Ev'ry island, sea, and mountain,Heav'n and earth, shall flee away;All who hate Him must, confounded,Hear the trump proclaim the day:Come to judgment! Come to judgment! Come to judgment!Come to judgment! Come away!
- 4Now redemption, long expected,See in solemn pomp appear;All His saints, by man rejected,Now shall meet Him in the air:Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!See the day of God appear!
- 5Answer Thine own bride and Spirit,Hasten, Lord, the gen'ral doom!The new Heav'n and earth inherit,Take Thy pining exiles home:All creation, all creation, all creation,Travails! groans! and bids Thee come!
- 6The dear tokens of His passion Still His dazzling body bears;Cause of endless exultation To His ransomed worshipers;With what rapture, with what rapture, with what raptureGaze we on those glorious scars!
- 7Yea, Amen! let all adore Thee, High on Thine eternal throne;Savior, take the power and glory, Claim the kingdom for Thine own;O come quickly! O come quickly! O come quickly!Everlasting God, come down!
More sheet music
Scripture
Topics
In the hymnals
- Written in 1758, the words are in 830 hymnals indexed by Hymnary.org. Their history →
- The tune, Helmsley, is in 107 hymnals. The tune →
Words, music and setting are in the public domain. The score is from the Open Hymnal Project (Brian J. Dumont), which places its own work in the public domain. Further sheet music is from PDHymns.com. The piano is the FluidR3 General MIDI sound font (MIT licence). How many hymnals print a hymn, and when it was written, is from Hymnary.org.