Come, Ye Thankful People, Come

“Come, Ye Thankful People, Come” is a Christian “harvest hymn” – a hymn related to agricultural harvest or for Harvest Festival services, either because it is specifically about harvesting the fruits of the earth, or because its theme is thankfulness or thanksgiving.

1. Come, ye thankful people, come,
Raise the song of Harvest-home!
All is safely gathered in,
Ere the winter storms begin:
God our Maker doth provide
For our wants to be supplied—
Come to God’s own temple, come;
Raise the song of Harvest-home!

2. We ourselves are God’s own field,
Fruit unto his praise to yield;
Wheat and tares together sown
Unto joy or sorrow grown;
First the blade and then the ear,
Then the full corn shall appear;
Grant, O Harvest Lord, that we
Wholesome grain and pure may be.

3. For the Lord our God shall come,
And shall take the Harvest home;
From his field shall purge away
All that doth offend that day,
Give his angels charge at last
In the fire the tares to cast;
But the fruitful ears to store
In the garner evermore.

4. Then, thou Church triumphant come,
Raise the song of Harvest-home!
All are safely gathered in,
Free from sorrow, free from sin,
There, for ever purified,
In God’s garner to abide;
Come, ten thousand angels, come,
Raise the glorious Harvest-home!

Henry Alford (1810-1871) wrote “After Harvest” (first line, “Come, ye thankful people, come”) in 1844 and it was first published that year in Psalms and Hymns, Adapted to the Sundays and Holydays throughout the Year (London: Francis & John Rivington). It was Hymn CXVI with four stanzas, titled “After Harvest” (see p. xvi and p. 147). The meter is 7s. Doubled (i.e., 8 lines of 7s.). In Hymns Ancient and Modern, “Come, ye thankful people, come,” was set to sing with the hymn tune St. George’s Windsor by George Job Elvey (1816–1893). In 1865, Alford revised the hymn and republished it in his Poetical Works. (Some editions of Poetical Works carry a note that this hymn had been “disfigured by alterations without the author’s consent”). He again revised it in 1867 when published in The Year of Praise.

The first stanza focuses on the harvest in a physical agricultural sense, then moves to speak of the spiritual harvest of God’s field.