Paul Ger­hardt (1607-1676); first pub­lished in the third set of Ebeling’s Pauli Ger­hardi Geist­liche An­dacht­en in 1666 un­der the ti­tle Morn­ing Bless­ing. The orig­in­al Ger­man had 12 vers­es; the vers­es we are fam­il­iar with are the orig­in­al verse 4 (Even­ing and morn­ing) and 9 (Fa­ther, oh, hear me).

The trans­la­tion be­low, by Rich­ard Mass­ie (1800-1887), ap­peared in the 1857 edi­tion of Will­iam Mer­cer’s The Church Psalt­er and Hymn Book. Other trans­lat­ors of this hymn in­clude John Kel­ly, who trans­lat­ed all 12 vers­es in his Paul Ger­hardt’s Spir­it­ual Songs (Lon­don, 1867) and Her­man H. M. Brueck­ner, whose trans­la­tion ap­peared in the Amer­i­can Lu­the­ran Hym­nal, 1930. Iron­ic­al­ly, Brueck­ner’s trans­la­tion did not ev­en in­clude the orig­in­al verse 4 (Even­ing and Morn­ing), the most fa­mil­iar be­gin­ning verse.

Die Güld­ne Son­ne, Jo­hann G. Eb­el­ing (1637-1676) (MIDI, NWC, PDF).