Lift up your hearts! is an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 hymn

Hymn

A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification...

 written in 1881 by H. Montagu Butler

Henry Montagu Butler

Henry Montagu Butler was an English academic.He was the son of a previous Headmaster of Harrow School, George Butler and his wife Sarah Maria née Gray. Educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, he married Georgina Elliot in 1861...

. The words echo the English translation of the Sursum corda

Sursum corda

The Sursum Corda is the opening dialogue to the Preface of the Eucharistic Prayer or Anaphora in the liturgies of the Christian Church, dating back to at least the third century and the Anaphora of the Apostolic Tradition. The dialogue is recorded in the earliest liturgies of the Christian...

, a part of the communion liturgy

Liturgy

Liturgy is either the customary public worship done by a specific religious group, according to its particular traditions or a more precise term that distinguishes between those religious groups who believe their ritual requires the "people" to do the "work" of responding to the priest, and those...

 in Christian churches.

Music

In the Church of England

Church of England

The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...

, Lift up your hearts! is usually sung to Woodlands, a musical setting composed by Walter Greatorex

Walter Greatorex

Walter Greatorex was an English composer and musician. He is probably best remembered for his hymn tune Woodlands which has been used with hymns such as Henry Montagu Butler's Lift Up Your Hearts! and Timothy Dudley-Smith's Tell Out, my Soul.-Education:Born in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, the son...

 for Gresham's School

Gresham's School

Gresham’s School is an independent coeducational boarding school in Holt in North Norfolk, England, a member of the HMC.The school was founded in 1555 by Sir John Gresham as a free grammar school for forty boys, following King Henry VIII's dissolution of the Augustinian priory at Beeston Regis...

 (where he was Director of Music) in 1916. Woodlands is the name of a house at the school.

School song

The hymn became the school song of Walter Greatorex's old school, Derby

Derby School

Derby School was a school in Derby in the English Midlands from 1160 to 1989. It had an almost continuous history of education of over eight centuries. For most of that time it was a grammar school for boys. The school became co-educational and comprehensive in 1974 and was closed in 1989...

, Haileybury College, Hertford, and also of Poundswick Grammar School, Wythenshawe, Manchester. It is also the school hymn of Melbourne's Haileybury College, Benenden School, Cranbrook and the County Grammar School for Boys, Woking, Surrey

Words

“Lift up your hearts!” We lift them, Lord, to Thee;

Here at Thy feet none other may we see;

“Lift up your hearts!” E’en so, with one accord,

We lift them up, we lift them to the Lord.


Above the level of the former years,

The mire of sin, the weight of guilty fears,

The mist of doubt, the blight of love’s decay,

O Lord of Light, lift all our hearts today!


Above the swamps of subterfuge and shame,

The deeds, the thoughts, that honor may not name,

The halting tongue that dares not tell the whole,

O Lord of Truth, lift every Christian soul!


Above the storms that vex this lower state,

Pride, jealousy, and envy, rage, and hate,

And cold mistrust that holds e’en friends apart,

O Lord of Love, lift every brother’s heart!


Lift every gift that Thou Thyself hast given;

Low lies the best till lifted up to heaven;

Low lie the bounding heart, the teeming brain,

Till, sent from God, they mount to God again.


Then, as the trumpet call, in after years,

“Lift up your hearts!” rings pealing in our ears,

Still shall those hearts respond, with full accord

“We lift them up, we lift them to the Lord!”