Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness,
Leave the gloomy haunts of sadness,
Come into the daylight’s splendor,
There with joy thy praises render
Unto Him whose grace unbounded
Hath this wondrous banquet founded;
High o’er all the heavens He reigneth,
Yet to dwell with thee He deigneth.
Sun, who all my life dost brighten,
Light, who dost my soul enlighten,
Joy, the sweetest man e’er knoweth,
Fount, whence all my being floweth,
At Thy feet I cry, my Maker,
Let me be a fit partaker
Of this blessed food from heaven,
For our good, Thy glory, given.
Note: the later verse(s) below have been reconstructed from historical memory and may not be word-for-word identical to the original published text.
Public domain hymn text (1649). Words by Johann Franck.
The Story Behind the Hymn
Johann Franck was a German lawyer and town councilor who served for many years as mayor of Guben, a town in eastern Germany, and who wrote hymns as a devoted amateur pursuit alongside his demanding civic and legal career, living through and helping to administer his town during much of the same devastating Thirty Years' War already discussed elsewhere in this collection in connection with both Martin Rinkart's 'Now Thank We All Our God' (hymn 50) and Georg Neumark's 'If Thou But Suffer God to Guide Thee' (hymn 148).
He wrote this hymn's text in 1649, specifically as a communion hymn, its extended imagery of dressing oneself in festive clothing and coming to a 'wondrous banquet' drawing directly on the New Testament's frequent use of banquet and wedding-feast imagery to describe Communion and the believer's fellowship with Christ, most notably the parable of the wedding banquet in Matthew 22.
Franck's own considerable success balancing a demanding public legal and administrative career with sustained private hymn writing was somewhat unusual among the German chorale tradition's major contributors, many of whom, like Nicolai and Neumark discussed elsewhere in this collection, were clergy or full-time writers rather than practicing lawyers and civic officials; Franck's hymns instead emerged from evenings and free hours carved out alongside his ongoing responsibilities governing a war-affected German town.
Johann Cruger, one of the most significant composers of the German Lutheran chorale tradition and organist at the Church of St. Nicholas in Berlin for several decades, composed the tune, and Catherine Winkworth later translated the German text into the English version commonly sung today, part of her broader career-long project of introducing major German chorale hymnody, largely unfamiliar to English congregations of her own era, into English-speaking Protestant worship.
