No Night There: A Song History

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“No Night There” is a gospel hymn pairing words by John R. Clements with music by Hart Pease Danks.[1] Its title and pictures are drawn from the vision of the holy city in Revelation 21, where the light of God replaces sun and lamp and every tear is wiped away.[2] Clements was born in County Armagh, Ireland, in 1868 and brought to the United States at age two; he went to work as a grocery clerk at thirteen, later built a wholesale grocery business, and had begun writing poetry as a young man. Hymnary.org credits him with nearly three hundred hymn texts, and this one is by far his most often printed.[3] Danks (1834–1903) also composed the music for the sentimental song “Silver Threads Among the Gold,” to words by Eben E. Rexford.[4][5]

Black-and-white lithograph of a robed figure gazing toward the holy city descending from heaven in light

Odilon Redon, And I, John, Saw the Holy City, New Jerusalem (The Apocalypse of Saint John), 1899, lithograph. Cleveland Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).

Hymnary.org dates Danks’s tune, also called NO NIGHT THERE, to 1899 and gives its meter as 7.6.7.6 with a refrain.[4] Within a decade the song was in gospel songbooks such as the revised and enlarged 1908 edition of Christ in Song.[6] Hymnary.org now indexes the tune in about 135 hymnals, including the 1985 Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal, and the text also appears in an African Methodist Episcopal hymnal.[4][1] For mountain dulcimer players, it is among the 68 hymns and gospel songs arranged in Stephen Seifert’s Join the Jam: Gospel Edition.[7]

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Sources

  1. Hymnary.org: "No Night There (text)".
  2. Hymns for Worship: "SDAH 427: No Night There".
  3. Hymnary.org: "John R. Clements".
  4. Hymnary.org: "NO NIGHT THERE (Danks)".
  5. Connecticut College Digital Commons: "Silver Threads Among the Gold".
  6. Hymnary.org: "Christ in Song (Rev. and Enl.), No. 862".
  7. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam Gospel Edition".