“Fairest Lord Jesus” has long been a favorite hymn of mine. The text presents beautiful scenes from nature, then says how much more beautiful Jesus is. The music is full of longing. All together, there is an adoration in this hymn that makes it more like a love song than anything else.
Verse two says:
Fair are the meadows,
fairer still the woodlands,
robed in the blooming garb of spring:
Jesus is fairer,
Jesus is purer
who makes the woeful heart to sing.
When I decided to write poems based on traditional Christian hymns for my book Voiceless Choirs: Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs, “Fairest Lord Jesus” was one of the first I thought of. Below is my poetic distillation of, and interaction with, the text.
Fairest Lord Jesus
Beauty is a blade
glinting through the stained glass
of blood smear
a blade I never felt
slipping in,
clipping an artery,
or slipping out of my chest
which heaves
from the shock and worship of sharpness
as I fall to my knees,
galaxies whirling in my wild eyes.
A Wandering Minstrel 