Each Stanza of “Of the Father’s Love Begotten,” (LSB 384) ends with, “Evermore and Evermore.” While we sang the 4th century hymn on Christmas Day, I thought of Edgar Allan Poe’s’ 1845 poem, “The Raven” with verses that end, “Quoth the Raven ‘Nevermore.’”
In Poe’s poem a person is filled with despair over the death of a young maiden, Lenore. Sleepless at midnight in bleak December, he hopes for relief. He hears a knocking at the door. It’s an imagined raven knocking at the door of his heart. The voice he hears calling out “Lenore” is his own voice. Is there deliverance from his woe? The answer is “Nevermore.”
In “Of the Father’s love Begotten,” the author tells us that God has planned the world’s deliverance from “Ere the world began to be…Evermore and Evermore.”
A Stanza omitted from the hymnal speaks to Poe’s “Nevermore.”
He (God)is found in human fashion,
Death and sorrow here to know,
That the race of Adam’s children,
Doomed by Law to endless woe,
May not henceforth die and perish
In the dreadful gulf below
Evermore and Evermore.
The hymn ends with praises to the Trinity, Son, Father and Holy Ghost:
Honor, glory and dominion,
And eternal victory
Evermore and evermore. Amen.
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