How Shall I Rise in Brightness - A New Hymn for Epiphany

Yesterday I posted the short poem How Shall I Rise? - a poem trying to reconcile the "Arise, shine!" kind of joy found in Isaiah's prophecy (60:1-9) with the cruelty and horror of the slaughter of the innocents (Matthew 2:1-12).  These two passages are read together at Epiphany and seem, to me, to be a difficult and awkward (and maybe even inappropriate) juxtaposition.

Yet even after I finished writing the words kept knocking around inside my head - I could almost hear them being sung, but it took me a while to figure out the melody.

Well now I have, and after a bit of rewriting, the free verse poem I wrote yesterday, has now become a metered hymn:

How shall I rise in brightness

while mother Rachel weeps?
How shall I accept the gifts
of magi from the east?

O Lord of light and glory,
bright shining star of dawn,
bring light to those in darkness;
bring light to all our hearts.

This mystery of glory,
that joy and pain come mixed,
is like frankincense perfume
with bittersweet fragrance.
O Lord of light and glory,
bright shining star of dawn,
the myrrh that anoints in death
gives way to heaven’s gold.

It should be sung to the hymn Passion Chorale (O Sacred Head Now Wounded).