Lyrics
Come, Thou long expected Jesus,
Born to set Thy people free;
From our fears and sins release us,
Let us find our rest in Thee.
Israel's strength and consolation,
Hope of all the earth Thou art;
Dear desire of every nation,
Joy of every longing heart.
Born Thy people to deliver,
Born a child and yet a King,
Born to reign in us forever,
Now Thy gracious kingdom bring.
By Thine own eternal Spirit
Rule in all our hearts alone;
By Thine all sufficient merit,
Raise us to Thy glorious throne.
Public domain hymn text (1744), based on 2 Corinthians 4:14 and Revelation 3:21.
The Story Behind the Hymn
Charles Wesley wrote "Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus" and published it in 1744 in Hymns for the Nativity of Our Lord, a small collection of only eighteen hymns that proved popular enough to be reprinted twenty times during Wesley's own lifetime, and twenty-seven times in total by 1791. As with much of Wesley's work, the text weaves in scriptural allusion at nearly every phrase — drawing here on both Old Testament longing for a promised deliverer and New Testament language of Christ's eternal reign.
The hymn holds together two movements of Advent at once: it remembers Christ's first coming, born in Bethlehem to "set Thy people free," while simultaneously praying for His promised return, asking Him to "rule in all our hearts" and to "raise us to Thy glorious throne." That double focus — looking back and looking forward within the same eight lines — is characteristic of Advent hymnody generally, and Wesley handles it with unusual compactness, needing only two stanzas to hold both movements together.
The tune most associated with the hymn in many hymnals, HYFRYDOL, was composed nearly a century later, in 1830, by the Welsh musician Rowland Hugh Prichard, who was only nineteen years old at the time. He wrote it for his own children's hymnal, Cyfaill y Cantorion ("The Singer's Friend"), and it has gone on to become one of the most loved Welsh hymn tunes, paired not only with Wesley's Advent text but with several other hymns as well.
The hymn's closing image, in which the singer asks not merely to be freed from fear and sin but to be brought all the way to Christ's "glorious throne," captures something of the restless, forward-leaning quality of Advent itself — a season built entirely around waiting for what has not yet fully arrived.
