Arise with Service and Thanks: “Awake, Awake to Love and Work”

“Awake, Awake to Love and Work” is a work by Geoffrey Anketel Studdert-Kennedy (lyrics/letters). It has no credited composer. Instead, the hymn uses the tune “Morning Song”, a folk tune with a minor resemblance to the traditional English tune for “Old King Cole.”

The hymn has three verses, and all its lines reflect the theme of loving service. The hymn also touches the theme of life, describing the creation and living things in the world with the hymn’s thanks to God who created it. The final verse summarizes the hymn’s theme. The meter for the hymn is 8.6.8.6.8.6.

Geoffrey Anketel Studdert-Kennedy (1883-1929) has an interesting history. Born in June 1883 in Leeds, England to Jeanette Anketell and William Studdert-Kennedy, He was the seventh child out of nine children. He attended the Leeds Grammar School and answered God’s call for him to be a priest. He was Curate at Rugby and Vicar of St. Paul’s (1914). When the Great War (First World War) began, he volunteered to be a military chaplain. He was called ‘Woodbine Willie’ because he gives cigarettes to soldiers of the same name. This military chaplain is also a brave man of God. He received the Military Cross because he ran to No Man’s Land to comfort the injured at Messines Ridge. After the war was over, he resumed his priestly duties at St. Edmund King and Martyr (London). As a priest after the war, he became a pacifist.

He was an author, poet, and hymn-writer. His poems include “Rough Rhymes of a Padre” (1918), “More Rough Rhymes” (1919), Lies (1919), “Democracy and the Dog-Collar” (1921), “Food for the Fed Up” (1921), “The Wicket Gate” (1923), “The Sorrows of God, and Other Poems” (1924), “The Word and the Work” (1925) and “The Warrior, the Woman, and the Christ” (1928). Meanwhile, his hymn works included “Awake, awake to love and work”, “Close by the heedless worker’s side”, “Not here for high and holy things“, “Tout repose! Tout repose!”, ''Readings`, ''When Jesus came to Golgotha they hanged him on a tree“, “When through the whirl of wheels and engines humming”. He died on March 1929 at the age of 45.