Who wrote the lyrics for "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing"?

Charles Wesley wrote the lyrics for “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” He composed the original text, titled “Hymn for Christmas-Day,” in 1739.

Wesley’s hymn first appeared in the collection Hymns and Sacred Poems, compiled with his brother John. The original opening was “Hark how all the welkin rings,” rather than the familiar “Hark! the herald angels sing.” George Whitefield revised that opening and made other textual changes in the eighteenth century.

The melody creates a frequent source of confusion. Modern performances usually use music adapted from Felix Mendelssohn’s Festgesang, a secular work written in 1840. William Hayman Cummings fitted that melody to Wesley’s words in 1855. Mendelssohn therefore supplied the familiar tune’s musical basis, but not the carol’s lyrics.

The hymn draws on the Nativity account in Luke 2:8–14. Its widely sung modern form is shorter and substantially revised from Wesley’s original ten four-line verses.