O Come, O Come Emmanuel (Day Four)

I plan on posting a normal post again, hopefully tomorrow. There are a lot of things I'm mulling over these days, and maybe I can commit some of them to paper right now. Others, perhaps not, but we'll see. In the mean time, I continue the festival of carols with the Christmas song of the day for the fourth day of Christmas. “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” is surely one of my very favorites — I love its haunting melody and combination of both somber yearning and joyous hope. The first stanza and refrain are below.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

—Unknown (trans. by John M. Neale)