Frederick Lucian Hosmer (1840-1929) wrote this hymn in 1891for the commencement ceremony of Meadville Theological School in Pennsylvania, a Unitarian Seminary (now Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago).  Hosmer had been educated at Harvard Divinity School after graduating from Harvard College in 1862; in 1869 he was ordained in a Congregational Unitarian Church and served throughout his life as a Unitarian minister in several places across the U.S.   Hosmer wrote many hymns, publishing three books with William Channing Gannett, another Unitarian minister and a friend from the Divinity School.  This stately hymn begins with the first supplication of the Lord’s Prayer.  In the second quatrain the darkness of the “slow watches of the night” nevertheless contains the promise of light in the silent stars, and in the third quatrain “the flags of dawn” appear, harbingers of the “clear, shining light” that is the day of God.  The final two quatrains, perhaps echoing the final verses of Psalm 85, delineate the character of the kingdom of God.  In its expectation of “the promised day,” the hymn is perfect for the season of Advent.

The tune “Irish” is an Irish folk song first printed (without a name) by Samuel Powell in Collection of Hymns and Sacred Poems, Dublin, 1749, containing mostly hymns by the Wesleys.  The tune was first used with Hosmer’s words and harmonized in The English Hymnal, 1906.