Christ My Song - 535
Victor of night! - The Victor
(Horatius Bonar/Johannes Thomas Rüegg)
The Victor.
'Inferni claustra penetrans,
tuos captivos redimens,
Victor triumpho nobili
ad dextram Patris residens.'
Old Hymn.
1. Victor of night!
and all that night contains of storm and gloom,
who here below didst battle with the might
of the world's shadows, and didst overcome
the ruler of the darkness and the night;
oh, grant to us to share thy victory,
thus won for us upon the mortal tree,
that we may walk in light! (PDF - Midi)
2. Victor of death!
who hast gone down into man's cheerless tomb,
the chamber of his cold mortality,
to meet the sentence and reverse the doom,
to spoil the heartless spoiler of his prey,
that we may taste, not death, but life alone,
the heavenly life of the Victorious One; –
children of life and faith!
3. Victor of sin!
and all the evil that man's sin hath wrought, –
the severance from God, the empty heart,
the dread and the unrest which guilt hath brought,
the fever of the conscience, that slow smart
of life, with all its conflict and its toil, –
oh, share with us the conquest and the spoil
which thou for us didst win!
4. Victor of hell!
whose iron portals seemed to mock thy power;
whose king, with all his legions, issued forth
to measure strength with thee in that dark hour
when the dread battle between heaven and earth
and lowest hell was to be lost or won, –
oh, grant that we, wearing the Victor's crown,
may in his city dwell!
Horatius Bonar, Hymns of the Nativity, 1879, 19-20.