Thursday, October 23, 2025

It is the 23rd of October 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You may have never heard of Robert Bridges- he was a poet Laureate in the United Kingdom and translator of poetry in the late 19th and early 20th century and he is largely responsible for the posthumous fame of his friend the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins but perhaps you might have your interest piqued with the first line of a biography of the poet which referred to him as “a hymn-writer in revolt”.

In fact, before the worship wars of the last few decades, there was a similar tumult in the 19th century, and Bridges, a man whose life was marked by tragedy, would be one of its major movers.

Robert Seymour Bridges was born on the 23rd of October in 1844 in a house near the shore in Kent, England. His father would die before he turned 10, and his mother remarried a vicar in the church of England- something that seemingly propelled his early desires for work in the church. He would attend Eton, where he became friends with future literary greats and academics, before attending Corpus Christi College at Oxford. There, he became friends with Gerard Manley Hopkins and was a member of the Anglican Brotherhood of the Holy Trinity. It was after Hopkins' early death that Bridges would publish his poems with an introduction, and Hopkins' posthumous reputation would make him the beloved poet that he is today.

While at Eton and Oxford, he would suffer the tragedies of the death of two brothers and his best friend. This, and possibly a crisis of faith (it is only alluded to in biographies), led to his abandoning church work in favor of studying medicine. After initially failing his medical exams and traveling abroad to study German and Italian, he was made a physician at the Hospital for Sick Children and the Royal Northern Hospital. He would dabble in poetry, and his “On A Dead Child” has become a touching, if not macabre, favorite.

Suffering from pneumonia, he would retire from the medical profession, and with his mother becoming a widow again, he moved in with her in Yattendon- a name that would become synonymous with him.

His early success at poetry convinced him he could leave medicine and live the life of a relative recluse. He did get married to the daughter of a friend- she was Mary Waterhouse, daughter of the famous architect Alfred Waterhouse.

Through Mary’s cousin, Robert would become acquainted with the next generation of poets that includes names like Yeats and Pound, Coleridge, Woolf, and Forster.

But it is his work in hymnody which concerns us here. He was something of a Scrooge when it came to modern hymns. As a classicist, he bemoaned modern phrasings and was critical of what he considers overly emotional musical settings. He wrote “A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn Singing,” in which he tells the story of Augustine hearing the hymns introduced by Ambrose. Augustine is moved, but concerned about being “too moved”- a typical Augustinian concern about being carried away by emotions. Bridges would write on these emotions he believed to be appropriate for worship and those he believed to be too personal and subjective, and thus, for him, inappropriate for worship.

Bridges would write that simplicity of tunes and precision in language were key. He would produce a hymnal- the “Yattendon Hymnal” which would include a number of his own translations of classic Christian hymnody and poetry from the Ancient Church and through the Reformation. Included were his translations of O Sacred Head, Sore Wounded- another translation of Paul Gerhardt’s words set to Bach’s music. He also translated a hymn with a famous Bach Setting- “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” as well as “When Morning Guilds the Skies”.

When both his daughter and wife became ill, the family moved about for a more suitable climate- settling in Switzerland for a time before moving into their home, designed by his father-in-law at Boar’s Hill overlooking Oxford. The wounding of his son during WW1 and his daughter's death would inspire more poetry that was religious as well as patriotic. He would cofound the Society for Pure English the same year he was named Poet Laureate.

His final work was a longer poem called “The Testament of Beauty,” which he spent some 5 years on before it was published in 1929, just after his 85th birthday and months before his death. Robert Seymour Bridges- poet, critic, translator, and hymn writer was 85, born on this day in 1844.

 The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and Psalm 84- let’s take it from the Metrical Psalter, which Bridges loved:

¹ How lovely is thy dwelling-place,
O Lord of hosts, to me!

The tabernacles of thy grace

how pleasant, Lord, they be!

² My thirsty soul longs veh’mently,

yea faints, thy courts to see:

My very heart and flesh cry out,

O living God, for thee.

³ Behold, the sparrow findeth out

an house wherein to rest;

The swallow also for herself

hath purchased a nest;

Ev’n thine own altars,* where she safe

her young ones forth may bring,

O thou almighty Lord of hosts,

who art my God and King.

⁴ Blessed are they in thy house that dwell,

they ever give thee praise.

⁵ Blessed is the man whose strength thou art,

in whose heart are thy ways

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 23rd of October 2025, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man dying to tell you that Alfred Waterhouse designed the notorious Strangeways prison, made doubly famous in the title of the Smith’s 4th and Final study album… he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who is actually excited- “Strangeways Here We Come” is a cool title- but a reference to a notorious Manchester prison… I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.