On Being Led to the Light by Darke

For Sunday, February 15, 2026
Christ Whose Glory Fills the Skies by Harold Darke

By David Jolliffe

I have always had a warm place in my heart for the music of Harold Darke, whose anthem, “Christ Whose Glory Fills the Skies,” will be sung by the St. Paul’s choir at the 11 am service on February 15. 

When I became an Episcopal chorister in 1975, I sang in an impressive choir at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Wheeling, West Virginia.  In those days the choir would regularly have the opportunity to sing festive settings of the “ordinary” mass, and one of our favorites was Darke’s “Communion Service in A Minor.”  Its music is sublime—its Gloria opens with one of the most wonderous splashes of unison singing imaginable.  I was drawn to it because it was dedicated to the Rev. Mitchell Haddad, canon sacrist of St. Paul’s Cathedral in Buffalo, and the father of my dear friend Katie Crosbie, who would sponsor my confirmation when I transitioned from the Methodist to the Episcopal Church soon after joining the choir.

Darke, who lived from 1888 to 1976, is best known as a composer of hymns, and “Christ Whose Glory Fills the Skies” is one of his best.  Here are the lyrics, written by the ever-prolific Charles Wesley:

Christ, whose glory fills the skies,
Christ, the true and only Light,
Sun of righteousness, arise,
triumph o'er the shade of night;
Day-spring from on high, be near;
Day-star, in my heart appear.

Dark and cheerless is the morn
unaccompanied by Thee;
joyless is the day's return,
till Thy mercy's beams I see,
till they inward light impart,
glad my eyes, and warm my heart.

Visit then this soul of mine,
pierce the gloom of sin and grief;
fill me, radiancy divine,
scatter all my unbelief;
more and more Thyself display,
shining to the perfect day.

            In many ways, Darke was the model of a workaday church musician in the twentieth century.  He was trained at the Royal College of Music, where among his teachers were Hubert Parry, Charles Villiers Stanford, and Charles Wood, all of whose music are in the repertoire that the St. Paul’s choir performs.  After accepting several short-term assignments in churches in and around London, he became organist-choirmaster at St. Michael Church Cornhill in the City of London, where he stayed for 50 years.  Perhaps his greatest accomplishment at Cornhill was the establishment of Monday noon organ recitals, which continue to this day, becoming the longest-lasting series of recitals in the Anglican Church.