Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark. Aaberg Jens Christian

released from sin and sorrow,

      I may sing this song tomorrow:

      Jesus was my Sun this night.

      The publication of these hymns firmly established Kingo’s reputation as the foremost poet of his country. Expressions of appreciation poured in upon him from high and low. The king, to whom the hymns were dedicated, so greatly appreciated the gift that, only three years later, he called their otherwise obscure author to become bishop of Fyn, one of the largest and most important dioceses of the country.

      Kingo was only forty-two years old when he assumed his new position. His quick elevation from an obscure parish to one of the highest offices within the church might well have strained the abilities of an older and more experienced man. But there can be no doubt that he filled his high position with signal ability. He was both able and earnest, both practical and spiritual. His diocese prospered under his care and his work as a bishop, aside from his renown as a poet, was outstanding enough to give him an enviable reputation in his own generation.

      But since his permanent fame and importance rest upon his achievement as a hymnwriter, his appointment as bishop probably must be counted as a loss, both to himself and to the church. His new responsibilities and the multifarious duties of his high office naturally left him less time for other pursuits. He traveled, visited and preached almost continuously throughout his large charge, and it appears like a miracle that under these circumstances, he still found time to write hymns. But in 1684, only two years after his consecration as bishop, he published the second part of Spiritual Song-Choir.

      This book bears a dedication to the queen, Charlotte Amalia. She was German by birth and a pious, able and distinguished woman in her own right. Kingo praises her especially for her effort to learn and speak the Danish language. In this respect, he declares, “Her Majesty put many to shame who have eaten the king’s bread for thirty years without learning to speak thirty words of Danish, because they hold it to be a homespun language, too coarse for their silky tongues”.

      Spiritual Song-Choir, Part II contains twenty hymns and seventeen “sighs”, thus outwardly following the arrangement of Part I. But the content is very different. The hymns are songs of penitence, repentance and faith. They show mastery of form, a wealth of imagery, a facility for concentrated expression and a range of sentiment from stark despair to the most confident trust that is, perhaps, unequalled in Danish poetry. It is an embattled soul that speaks through these hymns, a soul that has faced the abyss and clung heroically, but not always successfully, to the pinnacle of faith. One feels that the man who penned the following lines has not merely imagined the nearness of the pit but felt himself standing on the very brink of it.

      Mountains of transgressions press

      On my evil burdened shoulders,

      Guilt bestrews my path with boulders,

      Sin pollutes both soul and flesh,

      Law and justice are proclaiming

      Judgment on my guilty head,

      Hell’s eternal fires are flaming,

      Filling all my soul with dread.

      Of an even darker mood is the great hymn: “Sorrow and Unhappiness”, with the searching verse:

      Is there then no one that cares,

      Is there no redress for sorrow,

      Is there no relief to borrow,

      Is there no response to prayers,

      Is the fount of mercy closing,

      Is the soul to bondage sold,

      Is the Lord my plea opposing,

      Is His heart to sinners cold?

      The poet answers his questions in the following stanzas by assuring himself that the Sun of God’s grace can and will pierce even his “cloud of despair”, and that he must wait therefore in quietness and trust:

      O my soul, be quiet then!

      Jesus will redress thy sadness,

      Jesus will restore thy gladness,

      Jesus will thy help remain.

      Jesus is thy solace ever

      And thy hope in life and death;

      Jesus will thee soon deliver;

      Thou must cling to that blest faith.

      The uncertainty of life and its fortunes furnished a favored theme for many of his hymns, as for instance in the splendid —

      Sorrow and gladness oft journey together,

      Trouble and happiness swift company keep;

      Luck and misfortune change like the weather;

      Sunshine and clouds quickly vary their sweep.

      which is, poetically at least, one of his finest compositions. The poet’s own career so far had been one of continuous and rather swift advancement. But there was, if not in his own outward fortune, then in the fortunes of other notables of his day, enough to remind him of the inconstancy of worldly honor and glory. Only a few months before the publication of his hymns, Leonora Christine Ulfeldt, the once beautiful, admired and talented daughter of Christian IV, had been released from twenty-two years of imprisonment in a bare and almost lightless prison-cell; Peder Griffenfeldt, a man who from humble antecedents swiftly had risen to become the most powerful man in the kingdom, had been stript even more swiftly of all his honors and thrown into a dismal prison on a rocky isle by the coast of Norway; and there were other and well known instances of swift changes in the fortunes of men in those days when they were subject not only to the ordinary vicissitudes of human existence but to the fickle humor of an absolute monarch. It is, therefore, as though Kingo at the height of his own fortune would remind himself of the quickness with which it might vanish, of the evanescense and vanity of all worldly glory. That idea is strikingly emphasized in the following famous hymn:

      Vain world, fare thee well!

      I purpose no more in thy bondage to dwell;

      The burdens which thou hast enticed me to bear,

      I cast now aside with their troubles and care.

      I spurn thy allurements, which tempt and appall;

      ’Tis vanity all!

      What merit and worth

      Hath all that the world puts so temptingly forth!

      It is naught but bubbles and tinctured glass,

      Loud clamoring cymbals and shrill sounding brass.

      What are their seductions which lure and enthrall;

      ’Tis vanity all!

      O honor and gold,

      Vain idols which many with worship behold!

      False are your affluence, your pleasure and fame;

      Your wages are envy, deception and shame,

      Your garlands soon wither, your kingdom shall fall;

      ’Tis vanity all!

      O carnal desire,

      Thou tempting, consuming and treacherous fire,

      That catches like tinder and scorches like flame,

      Consigning the victim to sorrow and shame,

      Thy honeyest potion is wormwood and gall;

      ’Tis vanity all!

      Then, fare thee farewell,

      Vain world, with thy tempting and glamorous spell!

      Thy wiles shall no longer my spirit enslave,

      Thy splendor and joy are designed for the grave

      I yearn for the solace from sorrows and harm

      Of Abraham’s arm!

      There shall all my years

      I