The beautiful hymn has an edge of tension and melancholy - our Christmas celebrations inevitably lead to Easter. Just as, in the prophecies from Isaiah, a “rose,” or stem, shoots up from the stump, so too do we celebrate Christ’s birth in the knowledge that He brings life out of death - and his death brings us a new kind of life. The season of Advent points us not only to Christmas, but to the second coming of Christ, when He will finally makes all things new. The tiny babe whose birth we celebrate, our “Rose,” is come to “dispel…the darkness everywhere.” (https://hymnary.org/text/lo_how_a_rose_eer_blooming)
Here is a beautiful choral rendition.
1 Lo, how a Rose e'er blooming
From tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse's lineage coming
As men of old have sung.
It came, a flower bright,
Amid the cold of winter
When half-gone was the night.
2 Isaiah 'twas foretold it,
The Rose I have in mind:
With Mary we behold it,
The virgin mother kind.
To show God's love aright
She bore to men a Savior
When half-gone was the night.
3 This Flower, whose fragrance tender
With sweetness fills the air,
Dispels with glorious splendor
The darkness everywhere.
True man, yet very God,
From sin and death He saves us
And lightens every load.
This is the translation by Theodore Baker (b. New York, NY, 1851; d. Dresden, Germany, 1934). Baker studied music in Leipzig, Germany, and wrote a dissertation on the music of the Seneca people of New York State–one of the first studies of the music of American Indians. From 1892 until his retirement in 1926, Baker was a literary editor and translator for G. Schirmer, Inc., in New York City and then returned to Germany. (https://hymnary.org/text/lo_how_a_rose_eer_blooming)
1 Lo, how a Rose e'er blooming
From tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse's lineage coming
As men of old have sung.
It came, a flower bright,
Amid the cold of winter
When half-gone was the night.
2 Isaiah 'twas foretold it,
The Rose I have in mind:
With Mary we behold it,
The virgin mother kind.
To show God's love aright
She bore to men a Savior
When half-gone was the night.
3 This Flower, whose fragrance tender
With sweetness fills the air,
Dispels with glorious splendor
The darkness everywhere.
True man, yet very God,
From sin and death He saves us
And lightens every load.
This is the translation by Theodore Baker (b. New York, NY, 1851; d. Dresden, Germany, 1934). Baker studied music in Leipzig, Germany, and wrote a dissertation on the music of the Seneca people of New York State–one of the first studies of the music of American Indians. From 1892 until his retirement in 1926, Baker was a literary editor and translator for G. Schirmer, Inc., in New York City and then returned to Germany. (https://hymnary.org/text/lo_how_a_rose_eer_blooming)
