Hymnus Paradisi is a choral work by Herbert Howells for soprano and tenor soloists, mixed chorus, and orchestra.
The work was inspired in part by the death from polio of his son Michael in 1935.
Howells wrote the work from 1936 to 1938, drawing on material from the then-unpublished Requiem of 1932,[1] but then retained the music privately, without public performance.
Howells maintained later in life that Ralph Vaughan Williams convinced him to allow the work to be performed publicly at the Three Choirs Festival.
The piece consists of six movements: Hugh Ottaway and Christopher Palmer have commented on the stylistic affinity of Hymnus Paradisi with the music of Frederick Delius.