Vital Sparks: Behold the smiling, happy land

The Sacred Harp is such a Christian book that it’s hard for me, sometimes, to remember that it contains a number of songs that are secular in nature. I was curious whether there were a significant change between the number of secular songs in the 1991 and 2025 editions. One might think that the 2025 edition of The Sacred Harp, with its larger base of singers from many walks of life and locations, would be more secular than the 1991 edition.

This essay (in two parts) will explore the secular songs in these two editions of The Sacred Harp. My working definition of a secular song, in the context of this book, will be one that doesn’t explicitly mention God or especially Christian concepts and practices. Take, for example, the words to 137 LIBERTY:

No more beneath th’oppressive hand
Of tyranny we groan.
Behold the smiling, happy land
That freedom calls her own.

This is strictly a patriotic song: not inconsistent with Christian belief, but it does not require it. On the other hand, a song like 124 LOVER OF THE LORD is wholly non-secular in the sense I am using:

Lovers of pleasure more than God,
For you He suffered pain;
For you the Savior spilt His blood,
And shall He bleed in vain?
Oh, you must be a lover of the Lord,
Or you can’t go to heaven when you die.

Every line mentions God, Jesus, or Christian concepts like heaven or the atoning death of Jesus.

So, which are the secular songs in The Sacred Harp? They fall into several categories: patriotic songs, sentimental ballads, memento mori songs, and a few others with their own particular category—even, perhaps, a love song.

Patriotic songs

It is the patriotic songs I think of first when I consider secular songs. I have already mentioned 137 LIBERTY, but there are others. 242 ODE ON SCIENCE, in the 1991 edition, praises the American experiment:

The British yoke, the Gallic chain,
Was urged upon our necks in vain,
All haughty tyrants we disdain,
And shout, Long live America!

The Revision-Music Committee has not, to my knowledge, explained their rationale behind which songs were removed, but when Sacred Harp is regularly used in British and French singing conventions, it is easy to imagine why this song was removed! I do not know if it was intentional, but it is interesting that the new song at 242 in the 2025 edition is called REVERE, after the American patriot. Its words are religious—Watts’s “Am I a soldier of the cross” poem.

A song I strongly associate with this song is 358 MURILLO’S LESSON, partly because it, too, refers to the United States as Columbia, and centers the United States as a place of special import:

As down a lone valley with cedars o’erspread
From war’s dread confusion I pensively strayed,
The gloom from the face of fair heaven retired,
The winds hushed their murmurs, the thunders expired;
Perfumes as of Eden flowed sweetly along,
A voice as of angels enchantingly sung,
Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise,
The queen of the world and the child of the skies!

This song shed its rarely sung second verse in the 2025 edition. Again, I don’t have insight into why the second verse was dropped, but I do know the one time I led both verses I mildly surprised the class by singing them both. 

Another secular song is the Theodore Dwight’s lament over the death of George Washington, 110 MOUNT VERNON:

Where shall our nation turn its eye,
What help remains beneath the sky?
Our friend, protector, strength, and trust,
Lies low and mold’ring in the dust.

Washington is mentioned in another patriotic song, 346 THE AMERICAN STAR:

The spirits of Washington, Warren, Montgomery
Look down from the clouds with bright aspect serene.
Come, soldiers, a tear and a toast to their mem’ry,
Rejoicing they’ll see us as they once have been.
To us the high boon by the gods has been granted
To spread the glad tidings of liberty far.
Let millions invade us, we’ll meet them undaunted,
And conquer or die by th’American Star.

Like LIBERTY, ODE ON SCIENCE, and MURILLO’S LESSON, this song sees a special place for America; here “the gods” (surprising language for a Christian book) have granted America a boon to “spread the glad tidings of liberty far.” The Revolutionary generals seem demigods, looking down on America. It answers MOUNT VERNON’s question, “Where shall our nation turn its eye?” with the answer that the “spirit of Washington” et al. will guide America.

Sentimental ballads

Every month, I try to attend our local ballad session. It’s completely different from Sacred Harp singing: we sit around a table and sing solo, taking turns. We focus on songs from Ireland and the United Kingdom for the most part. Sometimes, I sing  The Lass of Aughrim, with its sad, sad lyrics. The unnamed lass tries to get Lord Gregory to acknowledge her and their child, but Gregory claims to not recognize her. It ends with her plaintive plea:

The rain falls on my yellow locks
And the dew, it wets my skin.
My babe lies cold within my arms
Lord Gregory, let me in.

Similar songs, with similar sentiments, show up in The Sacred Harp. The perfidy of men is hinted at in 359 BRIDE’S FAREWELL.

Farewell, Mother, now I leave you,
Griefs and hopes my bosom swell,
One to trust who may deceive me:
Farewell, Mother, fare you well.

BRIDE’S FAREWELL is secular, but not all sentimental ballads in The Sacred Harp are. In the 2025 edition, 438 THE BLIND GIRL makes an appearance. It, too, is a daughter pleading with her mother. Here is its last verse:

O mother, will the God above
Show tenderness like thee?
Will He bestow such care and love
On a poor girl like me?
Dear mother, leave me not alone,
Go with me when I die;
Lead thy blind daughter to the throne
And stay in yonder sky.

But 398 THE DYING BOY is also secular; this time, a son calls to his mother:

I’m dying, Mother, dying now,
Please raise my aching head,
And fan my heated, burning brow;
Your boy will soon be dead.

These sentimental ballads seek to inspire empathy and compassion in the singer or listener. When we sing them, we enter another person’s world, or perhaps express our own fears and distress at the way things are.

Looking to part 2

In part two of this essay, I will discuss secular memento mori songs (songs that remind us that we will all die one day), as well as some songs that don’t fit neatly into these categories. I’ll also try to answer the question, Is the 2025 edition more secular than the 1991 edition? (Spoiler alert: No. But why do I think that?) 

But before I go, I want to discuss an important fact about these secular songs, and also to ask a question to consider.

Here is the important fact: these secular songs are set among hundreds of Christian religious songs, and each song in The Sacred Harp gets its own Bible verse. Even 346 THE AMERICAN STAR has one (I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people, that have set themselves against me round about.—Psalm 3:6). In one way, these secular songs are hiding out in the midst of a mass of Christian songs. In another way, these secular songs are Christianized by their presence in a Christian song book and the wraparound Bible verse. And some of these have been “secularized” by virtue of not having all of their verses present. For example, the poetry from 398 THE DYING BOY is extracted from a longer poem, which also includes these Christian words:

A band of angels beckon me,
I can no longer stay;
Hark! how they sing, "We welcome thee;"
Oh! dear one, haste away. 

The hour has come, the end is near,
My soul is mounting high;
What glorious strains salute my ear,
From heav'n's bright angel choir!

The poem concludes with the boy’s hope of a crown in heaven as he passes through “the pearly gate.” 398 THE DYING BOY is secular only because we don’t have all of the words.

And here is a question to ponder: What to think about 254 ROSE OF SHARON in the 1991 edition?

I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley.
As the lily among the thorns, so is my love among the daughters;
As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons.

I sat down under his shadow with great delight,
And his fruit was sweet to my taste.

He brought me to the banqueting house;
His banner over me was love.

Stay me with flagons,
Comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love.

I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem,
By the roes, and by the hinds of the field,
That you stir not up, nor awake, my love, till he please.

The voice of my beloved,
Behold! he cometh, leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.

My beloved spake,
And said unto me,
Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.

Billings’s anthem, based on Song of Solomon 2:1-11 (with several verses left out), is, on the one hand, clearly Biblical, and so, religious. But it is just a love song, even if metaphorically (and, to my mind, beautifully) it is taken to describe Christ, the “beloved” of the song, and the people of God as the “rose of Sharon.” As Ephesians 5:32 says, “This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.”

So, which is it, a secular song, or a religious one?

As always, let me know where I am wrong!