Katherine Kennicott Davis studied at Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, where she was also a teaching assistant in music. From 1921 to 1929 she taught singing and piano in private schools in Concord, Massachusetts, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After 1929 she devoted herself largely to music composition. She wrote some eight hundred pieces, most of which were choral (often writing under several pseudonyms). One of her most popular songs is “The Little Drummer Boy,” originally called “Carol of the Drum” (1941)¹. Enjoy reading this one as a poem.

Let all things now living
A song of thanksgiving
To God the creator triumphantly raise.
Who fashioned and made us,
Protected and stayed us,
Who still guides us on to the end of our days.
His banners are o’er us,
His light goes before us,
A pillar of fire shining forth in the night.
Till shadows have vanished
And darkness is banished
As forward we travel from light into light.

His law he enforces,
The stars in their courses
And sun in its orbit obediently shine;
The hills and the mountains,
The rivers and fountains,
The deeps of the ocean proclaim him divine.
We too should be voicing
Our love and rejoicing;
With glad adoration a song let us raise
Till all things now living
Unite in thanksgiving:
“To God in the highest, Hosanna and praise!”
Amen.

¹hymnary.org/text/let_all_things_now_living_a_song_of_than

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