I Vow to Thee, My Country

"I Vow to Thee, My Country" is a British patriotic hymn, created in 1921 when music by Gustav Holst had a poem by Sir Cecil Spring Rice set to it.

The origin of the hymn's text is a poem by diplomat Sir Cecil Spring Rice, written in 1908 or 1912, entitled "Urbs Dei" ("The City of God") or "The Two Fatherlands".

In 1912, he was appointed as Ambassador to the United States of America, where he influenced the administration of Woodrow Wilson to abandon neutrality and join Britain in the war against Germany.

Shortly before he departed from the US in January 1918, he rewrote and renamed "Urbs Dei", significantly altering the first verse to concentrate on the themes of love and sacrifice rather than "the noise of battle" and "the thunder of her guns", creating a more sombre tone because of the loss of life suffered in the Great War.

Vaughan Williams himself composed an alternative tune to the words, Abinger, which was included in the enlarged edition of Songs of Praise but is very rarely used.

[18] In August 2004, Stephen Lowe, Bishop of Hulme criticised the hymn in a diocese newsletter, calling it "heretical" because of its nationalist overtones.

[20] "I Vow to Thee, My Country" was voted as the UK's sixth favourite hymn in a 2019 poll by the BBC's Songs of Praise.