Great Poetry Connects with a Great Composer
For Sunday, May 17, 2026
Let All the World in Every Corner Sing, Ralph Vaughan Wiliams
By David Jolliffe
A familiar face in the Episcopal hymnal meets up with a brilliant 20th-century English composer in the anthem that the St. Paul’s adult choir will sing at the 11 a.m. service on May 17. The lyricist is the famous 17th-century poet George Herbert, and the composer is the inimitable Ralph Vaughan Wiliams. The anthem is “Let All the World in Every Corner Sing.”
Herbert (1593 to 1933) was a principal figure in the movement called “metaphysical poetry,” a literary genre characterized by intellectual complexity, philosophical themes, and inventive uses of conceits and paradoxes. The term “metaphysical” refers to ideas that go beyond the physical world and deal frequently with abstract or spiritual concepts.
One can find Herbert’s poetry scattered throughout the 1982 Hymnal: Hymn 382, “King of Glory, King of Peace”; Hymn 487, “Come my Way, my Truth, my Life”; Hymn 592, “Teach Me, My God and King”; Hymn 645/646, “The King of Love My Shepherd Is”; and, of course, Hymns 402 and 403, “Let all the world in every corner sing,” both set to Herbert’s poem, originally titled “Antiphon.” Here is the poem, with Herbert’s divisions into “chorus” and “voice”:
Antiphon I.
Let all the world in ev'ry corner sing,
My God and King.
The heav'ns are not too high,
His praise may thither flie:
The earth is not too low,
His praises there may grow.
Let all the world in ev'ry corner sing,
My God and King.
The church with psalms must shout,
No doore can keep them out:
But above all, the heart
Must bear the longest part.
Let all the world in ev'ry corner sing,
My God and King.
In the artful hands of Vaughan Williams (1972 to 1958), the anthem becomes a masterwork of text painting. We are familiar with the expression “the four corners of the world.” To amplify this motif, the composer layers one voice on another, as though people throughout the whole earth are adding their voices to the chorus of praise. In the phrase, “But above all, the heart must bear the longest part,” Vaughan Williams extends the notes on the word “longest.” While the church is shouting psalms, the anthem reminds us to prolong God’s praise even after we leave the sanctuary.