Lyrics
Jerusalem, my happy home,
When shall I with you be?
When shall my sorrows have an end?
Your joys when shall I see?
Your saints are crowned with glory great;
They see God face to face;
They triumph still, they still rejoice
In that most holy place.
There David stands with harp in hand
As master of the choir:
Ten thousand times would we be blessed
Who might this music hear.
Our Lady sings Magnificat
With tune surpassing sweet;
And all the virgins join the song
While sitting at her feet.
There Magdalene has left her tears,
And cheerfully does sing
With blessed saints, whose harmony
In ev'ry street does ring.
Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
God grant that I may see
Your endless joy, and of the same
Partaker ever be!
Public domain hymn text (late 16th century), inspired by the writings of Augustine.
The Story Behind the Hymn
"Jerusalem, My Happy Home" traces back to a much longer poem from the late sixteenth century, its full authorship genuinely uncertain. The oldest surviving copy, found in a British Library manuscript now dated to around 1593, is signed only with the initials "F.B.P." — sometimes expanded, without solid evidence, to "Francis Baker, Priest." A second, related sixteenth-century version exists under the name W. Prid, suggesting both may draw on a shared earlier source rather than either being the sole original.
The poem is understood to draw inspiration from Meditations of St. Augustine, a popular devotional volume that both Catholic and Protestant writers translated and adapted during the Reformation era. Circumstantial evidence in the text has led some scholars to believe its author was a Catholic writing under persecution in late sixteenth-century England — a period when religious loyalty of exactly that kind could carry real danger, giving the poem's longing for a "happy home" beyond present sorrow a possible edge of lived urgency.
The shortened, hymnal form commonly sung today is credited to Joseph Bromehead, an English clergyman who lived from 1748 to 1826 and served as curate of Eckington in Derbyshire for the whole of his ministry. Bromehead distilled the much longer original poem — which in some versions ran to dozens of stanzas — into the compact, six-stanza form that became standard in hymnals.
What survives of the original text moves through an increasingly vivid vision of Heaven: David playing harp as choir-master, Mary singing the Magnificat surrounded by virgins, Mary Magdalene's tears finally turned to song. Whoever first wrote it, writing perhaps under real threat for their faith, imagined a home defined entirely by the reversal of exactly what sorrow they knew.
