British Patriotic Song “I Vow to, Thee My Country”

“I Vow to Thee, My Country“ is a British patriotic hymn, created in 1921, when a poem by Sir Cecil Spring Rice was set to music by Gustav Holst. 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“. The poem described how a Christian owes his loyalties to both his homeland and the heavenly kingdom. In 1908, Spring Rice was posted to the British Embassy in Stockholm. 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. After the United States entered the war, he was recalled to Britain. Shortly before his departure from the US in January 1918, he re-wrote and renamed “Urbs Dei“, significantly altering the first verse to concentrate on the themes of love and sacrifice rather than “the noise of ba