What are these in bright array,
This innumerable throng,
Round the altar night and day,
Hymning one triumphant song:
"Worthy is the Lamb once slain,
Blessing, honour, glory, power,
Wisdom, riches, to obtain,
New dominion every hour."
These through fiery trials trod;
These from great affliction came;
Now before the throne of God,
Seal'd with His almighty name:
Clad in raiment pure and white,
Victor-palms in every hand,
Through their dear Redeemer's might,
More than conquerors they stand.
Hunger, thirst, disease unknown,
On immortal fruits they feed;
Them, the Lamb amidst the throne,
Shall to living fountains lead;
Joy and gladness banish sighs,
Perfect love dispels all fear,
And for ever from their eyes,
God shall wipe away the tear.
Sacred Poems and Hymns, 1854
First Line: | What are these in bright array, This innumerable throng |
Title: | What are these in bright array |
Author: | James Montgomery (1819) |
Meter: | 7.7.7.7 D |
Language: | English |
Copyright: | Public Domain |
What are these in bright array? J. Montgomery. [All Saints.] Published in his Greenland and other Poems, 1819, p. 185, in 3 stanzas of 8 lines, and headed “Saints in heaven." It was repeated in Cotterill's Selection, 1819, No. 204; in Montgomery's Christian Psalmist, 1825, No. 559; and in his Original Hymns, 1853, No. 237. It is given in several collections in Great Britain and America, and sometimes as, "Who are these in bright array?" In R. Bingham's Hymnologia Christiana Latina, 1871, it is rendered into Latin as "Quid sint cohortes lucidae."
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)