SDA Hymnal 142
Angels We Have Heard on High
Words: Traditional French carolMusic: Traditional French melodyTune: Gloria7.7.7.7 with Refrain
1Angels we have heard on high,
Sweetly singing through the night,
And the mountains in reply
Echoing their brave delight.
RefrainGloria in excelsis Deo,
Gloria in excelsis Deo.
2Shepherds, why this jubilee?
Why these songs of happy cheer?
What great brightness did you see?
What glad tidings did you hear?
3Come to Bethlehem and see
Him whose birth the angels sing;
Come, adore on bended knee
Christ, the Lord, the newborn King.
4See Him in a manger laid
Whom the angels praise above;
Mary, Joseph, lend your aid,
While we raise our hearts in love.
- Tune
- Gloria
- Meter
- 7.7.7.7 with Refrain
- Scripture
- Luke 2:8-20
The verse
- Meter
- 7.7.7.7 · as printed
- Foot
- trochaic (DUM-da) · 80% of beats fit
- Rhyme
- ABAB
Scan every line
/ stressed · ˘ unstressed · ? not in the dictionary
Verse 1
Verse 2
Verse 3
Verse 4
Refrain
Counted by machine from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. It cannot hear emphasis or a poet’s licence, so treat it as a place to start reading, not the last word.
The Advent Hymnals Companion
Commentary
By Advent Hymnals · 25 October 2026
Text and sources
A French carol, Les anges dans nos campagnes, first known in print in 1805 (Noëls français et provençaux, Marseille) and with its familiar tune in Paris in 1842. The English began as a free paraphrase by James Chadwick (1813–1882), a Roman Catholic priest who later became Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle, printed in The Holy Family Hymns (London, 1860) and revised in The Crown of Jesus (1862).
The SDA Hymnal credits its text as the Crown of Jesus translation of 1862, altered, and adapted by Earl Marlatt in 1937. That is why its wording differs from the common form: "through the night" for "o'er the plains", "Why these songs of happy cheer?" for "Why your joyous strains prolong?".
The French stanzas tell of the angels, the shepherds' joy and the birth; none names Mary or Joseph. The fourth stanza, with "Mary, Joseph, lend your aid", belongs to the English Catholic versions of 1860–62. Which of the two first printed it in this wording is still to be checked against the books.
The dramatic situation
The carol is a small drama in four scenes, told in the present tense. The time is the night of the birth; the place moves from the fields to the stable.
Stanza 1. Someone who has heard the angels reports their song, and the hills answering it:
Stanza 2. A questioner meets the shepherds and asks the reason for their joy:
Stanza 3. The shepherds answer with an invitation:
Stanza 4. The company has arrived. The speakers stand at the manger, and besides the child the people there are His mother and Joseph:
The "we" of the carol is the congregation singing itself into the shepherds' story. Its time setting is Bethlehem on the night of the birth, not the singers' own day.
Structure and argument
The stanzas move from hearing (1) to asking (2) to invitation (3) to arrival and worship (4): Luke 2:8–20 retold as a journey the singers make.
Every stanza ends in the refrain, which is the angels' own song. By the end, those who heard the angels are singing their song with them.
Prosody
Four lines of seven syllables (7.7.7.7), trochaic: each line opens on a stress, AN-gels WE have HEARD on HIGH. The last foot is cut short, so every line also ends on a stress (catalectic trochaic tetrameter, the usual pattern of hymns in 7s).
The rhyme scheme is ABAB, with full, single-syllable rhymes (high / reply, night / delight).
The refrain changes the pace. In the tune GLORIA the first syllable of Gloria is stretched over a long run of notes, so the word itself becomes an act of rejoicing.
Figures of speech and imagery
Personification: the mountains "in reply" echo the angels' delight; creation answers heaven.
Apostrophe (speaking directly to someone), twice: to the shepherds ("Shepherds, why this jubilee?") and to Mary and Joseph. In both, the people addressed are inside the scene.
Rhetorical question: stanza 2 is all questions, which stanza 3 answers.
Scripture and allusion
Luke 2:8–14: the shepherds and the angels' song.
Luke 2:15, "Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing", is behind "Come to Bethlehem and see".
Luke 2:16, "they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger", is behind stanza 4. Luke himself puts Mary and Joseph at the manger when the shepherds arrive; the stanza is that verse in the shepherds' mouths.
The refrain is the angels' song of Luke 2:14 ("Glory to God in the highest") in the Latin of the ancient hymn Gloria in excelsis.
Diction and tone
Jubilee: great rejoicing. Brave: in the older sense, splendid. Lend your aid: help us, stand with us.
The Latin refrain keeps the carol's churchly origin, and gives the angels' words a sound apart from the rest of the stanza.
Theology
The carol tells the incarnation through the shepherds' eyes. The worship goes to the child: "Christ, the Lord, the newborn King", "Whom the angels praise above". Mary and Joseph are asked for help in the act of worship; they are not worshipped.
Adventists believe the dead sleep until the resurrection (Ecclesiastes 9:5; John 11:11–14), so a prayer to Mary and Joseph today would be a real problem. That is why the time setting of stanza 4 matters: see Readings and misreadings.
Words and music
The tune GLORIA is the French melody of the carol. In English-speaking hymnals its familiar harmony is usually credited to Edward Shippen Barnes.
The stanzas are set one note to a syllable and move quickly; the refrain's long run on "Glo-" carries the climax.
References
Hymnology Archive, "Angels We Have Heard on High" (hymnologyarchive.com/angels-we-have-heard-on-high).
Hymnary.org, "Angels We Have Heard on High".
Luke 2:8–20 (KJV).
Still to consult: Wayne Hooper and Edward E. White, Companion to the Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal (1988).
Hymnary.org, Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal (1985) #142: "Tr. in Crown of Jesus, 1862, alt.; adapt. Earl Marlatt, 1937".
Readings and misreadings
Mary, Joseph, lend your aid is a prayer to the dead: it asks saints in heaven for help.
The strongest form of this reading is historical. The stanza comes from the English Catholic versions: Chadwick, a priest and later a bishop, wrote for a book called The Holy Family Hymns (1860), and the French has no such stanza. A Catholic singer in 1860 could well have heard it as a prayer to the Holy Family.
The text itself, though, sets the scene. The singers are not in their own century. Stanza 3 is the shepherds' invitation, "Come to Bethlehem and see", and stanza 4 opens at the destination:
The address that follows is made at the manger, on the night of the birth, to the two people Luke says the shepherds found there (Luke 2:16). In the poem, Mary and Joseph are living people standing by the child, asked to help the visitors as they worship Him: "While we raise our hearts in love".
It is the same kind of address as stanza 2's "Shepherds, why this jubilee?", which no one takes as a prayer to dead shepherds. Read in its own time setting, the line is dramatic address, not invocation.
What an author may have meant and what the text says are not always the same. An Adventist congregation sings the scene as the poem sets it.