O Paradise!

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O Paradise! O Paradise! Who doth not crave for rest?

Author: Frederick W. Faber (1862)
Tune: PARADISE (Barnby)
Published in 455 hymnals

Printable scores: PDF, MusicXML
Audio files: MIDI

Representative Text

1 O Paradise, O Paradise,
Who doth not crave for rest?
Who would not seek the happy land
Where they that loved are blest:

Refrain:
Where loyal hearts and true
Stand ever in the light,
All rapture, through and through,
In God's most holy sight. A-men.

2 O Paradise, O Paradise,
The world is growing old;
Who would not be at rest and free
Where love is never cold? [Refrain]

3 O Paradise, O Paradise,
We long to sin no more;
We long to be as pure on earth
As on thy spotless shore: [Refrain]

4 O Paradise, O Paradise,
We shall not wait for long;
E'en now the loving ear may catch
Faint fragments of thy song: [Refrain]

5 Lord Jesus, King of Paradise,
O keep us in thy love,
And guide us to that happy land
Of perfect rest above: [Refrain]

Source: Service Book and Hymnal of the Lutheran Church in America #589

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Author: Frederick W. Faber

Raised in the Church of England, Frederick W. Faber (b. Calverly, Yorkshire, England, 1814; d. Kensington, London, England, 1863) came from a Huguenot and strict Calvinistic family background. He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and ordained in the Church of England in 1839. Influenced by the teaching of John Henry Newman, Faber followed Newman into the Roman Catholic Church in 1845 and served under Newman's supervision in the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. Because he believed that Roman Catholics should sing hymns like those written by John Newton, Charles Wesley, and William Cowpe, Faber wrote 150 hymns himself. One of his best known, "Faith of Our Fathers," originally had these words in its third stanza: "Faith of Our Fathers! Mary'… Go to person page >

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First Line:	O Paradise! O Paradise! Who doth not crave for rest?
Title:	O Paradise!
Author:	Frederick W. Faber (1862)
Meter:	8.6.8.6.6.6.6.6
Language:	English
Refrain First Line:	Where loyal hearts and true stand ever in the light
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Notes

O Paradise, O Paradise. F. W. Faber. [Heaven.] First published in his Hymns, 1862, in 7 stanzas of 8 lines, and entitled "Paradise." In 1868 it was included in the Appendix to Hymns Ancient & Modern, with the omission of stanzas iii. and vii., and the addition of the stanza “Lord Jesus, King of Paradise," by the compilers. For some time after the hymn was included in Hymns Ancient & Modern it was very popular, Dr. Dykes's tune therein being the chief cause of its success. Latterly, however, its unreality, and, in its original form, its longing for sudden death, has caused it to be omitted from several of the best collections. The rewritten version, in three stanzas, in Morrell & How's enlarged edition of their Psalms & Hymns, 1864-67, No. 165, is a failure.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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