The day of resurrection!
Earth, tell it out abroad;
The Passover of gladness,
The Passover of God.
From death to life eternal,
From this world to the sky,
Our Christ hath brought us over
With hymns of victory.
Our hearts be pure from evil,
That we may see aright
The Lord in rays eternal
Of resurrection light;
And, listening to His accents,
May hear, so calm and plain,
His own “All hail!” and, hearing,
May raise the victor strain.
Public domain hymn text (1862 (English translation)). Words by John Mason Neale, from John of Damascus.
The Story Behind the Hymn
This hymn is the opening ode of the Golden Canon, considered the most significant piece of Eastern Orthodox liturgical poetry composed by John of Damascus, already discussed elsewhere in this collection as author of 'Come, Ye Faithful, Raise the Strain' (hymn 144), and it remains, to this day, the central hymn sung at midnight during the traditional Eastern Orthodox Easter (Pascha) vigil service, one of the most theologically and liturgically significant moments in the entire Eastern Christian church calendar.
The hymn's central image directly links the Christian celebration of Easter to the Jewish Passover, deliberately using the word 'Passover' itself — rooted in the ancient Hebrew festival commemorating Israel's deliverance from slavery in Egypt — to describe Christ's resurrection as a parallel, greater deliverance 'from death to life eternal,' a theological connection reinforced by the historical fact that Christ's own crucifixion and resurrection took place during the Jewish Passover festival itself.
John Mason Neale translated the Greek text into English in 1862, working, as with several other translations represented elsewhere in this collection, from within his broader lifelong project of introducing English-speaking Protestant congregations to the largely unfamiliar riches of ancient Eastern Orthodox hymnody, a body of liturgical poetry considerably older and, in Neale's own assessment, considerably richer than most hymnody then commonly sung in English churches.
Henry Thomas Smart, an English organist and composer who continued composing even after losing his eyesight entirely later in his career, wrote the tune most commonly paired with the hymn, and the resulting English version has become one of the standard Easter hymns sung across Western Protestant churches, carrying a piece of the ancient Eastern Orthodox midnight Easter liturgy into congregations that would otherwise likely never encounter it in its original Byzantine liturgical setting.
