For Christmas Eve

Words: Rev. John Mason Neale (1818-1866) in Carols for Christmastide (London, 1853). Neale wrote: "Probably latter half of the 15th century. Words original."

Music: Psallat scholarum concio, Rev. Thomas Helmore, Piae Cantiones, 1582; neither of these sources contained a musical score.

Source: Collected Hymns, Sequences and Carols (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1914), from John Mason Neale and Thomas Helmore, Carols for Christmas-tide (London: Novello, 1853). Only text was available in Collected Hymns; no music was included.

1. Toll! toll! because there ends to-night,
    An Empire old and vast:
An Empire of unquestion’d right
    O’er present and o’er past.
                                Toll!
Stretching wide from East to West,
Ruling over every breast,
    Each nation, tongue and caste.

2. Toll! toll! because a monarch dies,
    Whose tyrant statutes ran
From polar snows to tropic skies,
    From Greenland to Japan:
                                Toll!
Crowded cities, lonely glens,
Oceans, mountains, shores and fens,
    All own’d him Lord of man.

3. Toll! toll! because that monarch fought
    Right fiercely for his own;
And utmost craft and valour brought
    Before he was o’erthrown:
                                Toll!
He the Lord, and man the slave:
His the kingdom of the grave,
    And all its dim unknown.

4. Joy! joy! because a Babe is born,
    Who, after many a toil,
The scorner’s pride shall laugh to scorn,
    And work the Foiler’s foil:
                                Toll!
God, as Man, the earth hath trod:
Therefore man shall be as God,
    And reap the Spoiler’s spoil.