The Bright Daystar Is Comen Of His Heav’nly Towers

1 Rorate coeli desuper!

Heavens, distil your balmy showers;

For now is risen the bright Daystar,

From the rose Mary, flower of flowers:

The clear Sun, whom no cloud devours,

Surmounting Phoebus in the east,

Is comen of his heav’nly towers,

Et nobis puer natus est.

2 Sinners be glad, and penance do,

And thank your Maker heartfully;

For he that ye might not come to,

To you is comen, fully humbly,

Your soulès with his blood to buy,

And loose you of the fiend’s arrest,

And only of his own mercy;

Pro nobis puer natus est.

3 Celestial fowlès in the air,

Sing with your notès upon the height,

In firthès and in forests fair

Be mirthful now at all your might;

For passèd is your dully night;

Aurora has the cloudès pierced,

The sun is risen with gladsome light,

Et nobis puer natus est.

4 Sing, heaven imperial, most of height,

Regions of air make harmony,

All fish in flood and fowl of flight,

Be mirthful and make melody;

All Gloria in excelsis cry,

Heaven, earth, sea, man, bird and beast;

He that is crowned above the sky

Pro nobis puer natus est.

William Dunbar, (c. 1460—1530), one of the dominant Scottish Chaucerian poets
closely associated with the court of King James IV. Dunbar produced a large body of work in Middle Scots distinguished by its great variation in themes and literary styles.

Rorate caeli de super et nubes pluant justum.
(Isaiah 45:8)

Drop down, ye heavens, from above,
and let the skies pour down righteousness.

We have sinned, and are as an unclean thing, and we all do fade as a leaf:

and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away:

thou hast consumed us, because of our iniquities.
(Isaiah 64:5-7)

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people; my salvation shall not tarry:
I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions:
fear not, for I will save thee:
for I am the Lord thy God, thy Redeemer.
(Isaiah 40 & 41)