Johann Scheffler (1624–77), who published under the pen name Angelus Silesius, first printed this text in eight stanzas in his 1657 collection Heilige Seelen-Lust, drawing his opening line directly from Psalm 18:1, “I love You, O Lord, my strength.” Scheffler’s own title for the poem promised that the soul “will love Him until death,” a vow the hymn keeps from its very first stanza, “Thee will I love, O Light divine, so long as life is mine.” The Lutheran Service Book keeps five of Scheffler’s eight stanzas in Catherine Winkworth’s 1863 translation, but omits some of the poem’s most personal lines: an original third stanza confessing that the poet came to know God only late in life, a fourth giving thanks that though he searched and did not find God, God nevertheless found him, and a seventh praying for “sweet tears and a chaste fire” to consume his whole being in love. Scheffler’s distinctive meter later shaped Friedrich Funcke’s Ascension hymn “Draw Us to Thee” (Hymn 701), written deliberately in its image. As the Hymn of the Day, its vow to love God “so long as life is mine” answers the Gospel’s call to humility with the deeper confession that all our loving of God is itself the fruit of His having first found us.
Sung at Our Saviour
2025