Text · full lyrics
O come, divine Messiah;
The world in silence waits the day
When hope will sing its triumph
And sadness runs away.
And sadness runs away.
Dear Savior, haste! Come, come to earth.
Dispel the night and show your face,
and bid us hail the dawn of grace.
O come Messiah come!
O come Messiah come!
O come desire of nations,
Whom priest and prophet long foretold,
Will break the captive fetters,
Redeem the long-lost fold.
Redeem the long-lost fold.
Dear Savior, haste! Come, come to earth.
Dispel the night and show your face,
and bid us hail the dawn of grace.
O come Messiah come!
O come Messiah come!
O come in peace and meekness,
For lowly will your cradle be;
Though clothed in human weakness
We will your glory see.
We will your glory see.
Dear Savior, haste! Come, come to earth.
Dispel the night and show your face,
and bid us hail the dawn of grace.
O come Messiah come!
O come Messiah come!
The lyricist
Simon-Joseph Pellegrin
Pellegrin earned his living in two worlds that rarely overlapped: he wrote libretti for the Paris stage — among them work for Jean-Philippe Rameau — while supplying France's religious schools with devotional verse. His method was the same in each: he took tunes his audiences already knew, from opera and old carols alike, and fitted fresh words to them, which led one contemporary to needle him as a man who dined at the altar and supped at the theatre. He wrote "Venez, divin Messie" — the French original behind "O Come, Divine Messiah" — for the girls of Saint-Cyr, the school founded by Madame de Maintenon, setting its longing Advent text to the melody of a sixteenth-century carol about turning livestock out to graze. It appeared in one of two collections of carols he published in 1708 and 1711.