Lyrics
Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.
Be Thou my wisdom, and Thou my true word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.
Be Thou my battle shield, sword for the fight;
Be Thou my dignity, Thou my delight;
Thou my soul's shelter, Thou my high tower;
Raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power.
Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise;
Thou mine inheritance, now and always;
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of heaven, my treasure Thou art.
High King of heaven, my victory won,
May I reach heaven's joys, O bright heaven's Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my vision, O Ruler of all.
Public domain hymn text. Irish original attributed to Dallán Forgaill (c. 8th century); English translation by Mary E. Byrne (1905), versified by Eleanor H. Hull (1912).
The Story Behind the Hymn
Long before it became a staple of English-language hymnals, "Be Thou My Vision" existed as an Old Irish prayer-poem, or lorica — a genre of Celtic devotional verse meant to invoke God's protection much as a piece of armor shields the body. Tradition attributes the original text to Dallán Forgaill, a sixth-century Irish poet-saint, though the two manuscript copies that preserve it, held today by the Royal Irish Academy, are dated closer to the eighth century. For well over a thousand years, the words existed only in Irish, unknown outside a small circle of scholars.
That changed through the work of two women. Mary Elizabeth Byrne, a Dublin-born scholar of early Irish, translated the poem into English prose in 1905, publishing her rendering in Ériu, the academic journal of Ireland's School of Irish Learning. Byrne's translation was faithful but unversified — closer to a scholarly crib than a singable hymn. It was Eleanor Hull, founder of the Irish Texts Society, who in 1912 shaped Byrne's prose into the rhymed, metrical verses now familiar to congregations, giving the ancient prayer its enduring hymn form.
The tune came later still. In 1919, the editors of the Irish Church Hymnal paired Hull's text with "Slane," a traditional Irish folk melody named for the Hill of Slane in County Meath, a site long associated with St. Patrick. The match proved inspired: a modern hymn built from an ancient Irish prayer, carried by a tune rooted in the same soil, requesting not comfort or ease but that God himself become the singer's vision, wisdom, and treasure above every worldly good.
Today "Be Thou My Vision" ranks among the most beloved hymns in the English-speaking world, sung at funerals, weddings, and ordinary Sunday worship alike — a rare hymn whose plea feels as personal and urgent now as it must have to the anonymous monk who first prayed it well over a thousand years ago.
