The music was written by John Ireland. There are actually a lot of John Irelands--I associate the name with the 1800s bishop of St. Paul, Minnesota (he was born in Ireland, which helps), but this is someone else. The text is by Samuel Crossman, which maybe isn't quite as good a "nominative determinism" example as Ken Bible, but it's close!

When I was relatively young my children's choir did an anthem arrangement of this that I really enjoyed. In retrospect, that one did "minor for the first two verses, then major for the last verse, not just Picardy thirds but in several places," for a very neat melodic affect.

The text was written in the 1600s, and the anthem/maybe some other arrangements edited it to be a little more modern-sounding. Not even in a sexist way, just a "less archaic" way. Unfortunately, it comes at a cost of the rich rhyme scheme. Here are some of the lines from the modern version:

"Oh, who am I that for my sake
My lord should come to Earth and die?"

"He came from his blest throne, salvation to bestow
But people turned away, and none the Christ would know."

"Here might I stay and sing my song of love divine!
No grief nor love, oh Savior, was e'er like thine."

Here they are in the original:

"Oh, who am I that for my sake
My lord should take frail flesh and die?"

"He came from his blest throne, salvation to bestow;
The world that was his own would not its Savior know."

"Here might I stay and sing--no story so divine!
Never was love, dear King, never was grief like thine."

The first couple lines are 6666, with every short phrase rhyming. The second half is 448 (or 4444), with the internal rhyme ABBA, so there's a rhyme every four syllables! And the whole thing is six verses, not just three! This is some extremely impressive rhyme density, but if you only see a modernized version, you might miss it. (Although some of the words really only rhyme in 1600s pronunciation, like home/tomb. And there are repeats. So less impressive. But still more impressive than first glance.)

...And while I was trying to figure out what the modernized rhyme scheme was, I realized that if I have enough Google-fu to find that, I probably also have enough Google-fu to find the cool melody. So don't just take my word for it, search for Carolyn Jennings' "My Song is Love Unknown" on Youtube!

Short, repetitive praise song. What's interesting is the harmonization. Usually we have either four-part harmony, or one melody line. This is only the treble clef (nothing for the left hand/men's range), but there are three different pitches per beat. So more of a "rock" type feel, instead of the traditional choral parts?

Out of order, oops.

I'm not sure if this really qualifies as a genre or just confirmation bias, but the 1600s German composers (so a century after Luther, when Europe was going through the Thirty Years' War and other fun times) had some dark imagery. We got "distress, anguish, and affliction", "Alas, my treason," "scornfully surrounded with thorns" in Holy Week. Now we have "the groaning, sighing...bleeding, and the dying." As well as other fun feminine rhymes like affliction/crucifixion (again!) and pardon/garden (of Gethsemane). Whatever works.

If I were still doing the "question and answer" style, this would be one like "Were You There" where the title is already a question. "Well...did he? Really? For me? Yes, yes he did."

The story we were often retold in "memorizing hymns challenge" for youth choir is that Isaac Watts was strictly disciplined for his poetry habits as a child, and is alleged to have pleaded, "Oh father, do some pity take, and I will no more verses make." Oops.

The melody is major, so while slightly more fitting for a tune called "Martyrdom," still a little incongruous.

So the chorus is a very loose nod to one of Paul's letters about "let my only glory be in the cross, rather than any earthly achievements." However, attempting to tie anything and everything back to Jesus' cross makes for some odd juxtapositions; we get "the bright and morning star" (Jesus) in verse two, followed by "its shadow" (the cross's) in verse three.

We again have the slightly dated/vernacular use of "mumbling," but here it's spelled out in full rather than transcribed in dialect, which is probably a better choice in general. No footnote.

Tunewise, I suspect it might be related to "Joshua Fought The Battle of Jericho," if only because of the repetition ("a weary land, a weary land, a weary land..."); the latter is not included here.

The verses allude to different narratives about God's love being like water, which isn't always a Lenten theme, but shows up in (for instance) the Woman at the Well story. And the story of God providing the Israelites with water in the desert ties back to the "forty years in the wilderness" motif which is also alluded to in Lent.

The book of Isaiah is often alluded to because of its vivid prophetic images, but the prophet himself is not often namedropped as an individual/source of dialogue like he is here. (This isn't an absolute, there's at least one other hymn about Isaiah that we'll get to probably fairly late in the blog.)

Okay, it's belated, but "northern hemisphere bias" really needs to be a tag. Jesus is born in the winter when all is cold and dark (except when it's not), he dies and is risen in the spring like the seeds that give rise to new life (except when it's not). Although actually, the date of Easter is linked to the date of Passover, which is traditionally celebrated as a spring festival, so never mind.

Anyway, these are some nice lyrics; no attempts at rhyming so it doesn't have to be a letdown, and it uses relatively inclusive language for God ("Source" as the parallel to "Father"/Creator, although it does namedrop the "Father" as well so maybe not) without being too tryhard.

I was surprised to learn (just now) that this is actually the older of two texts that go with this melody--the other one, which we'll get to relatively soon, sounds a lot more old-timey in its language (and that one isn't a translation, either). Anyway, this music stands out for its 8/2 triplets. That means, the main "beat" we feel is a half-note (twice as long as the "traditional" beat), and there are four of those to every measure (so the first beat of four gets the stress). But, a lot of those notes, rather than get subdivided into two equal units like usual, get subdivided into three equal units. To make matters worse, there are lots of other cases where they get broken into two unequal units, and those are written as 1.5+.5 = 2 rather than 2(2/3)+2/3  = 2 (the latter being what you would expect seeing so many triplets). I wonder if it's actually performed that way or if organists just know to break it all into equal thirds or two-thirds.

The main theme of the text seems to be how we are all one in our struggle to follow Jesus, looking to one God, lots of unity.

Is there an "echoy" part in the harmonization?

Yep! "I want Jesus to walk with me (walk with me)."

What is the significance of the hymn tune name?

Well, "Sojourner" is "someone who goes on a journey," so that makes sense in the context of "walk with me." But it's also the name of a prominent African-American abolitionist of the early 1800s, and this is an African-American spiritual, so I'm guessing this arrangement was made with an eye to her.

How's the Shannon density?

Fairly low; lines one and two are a repeat of each other, and the last line is the same in all three verses.