@Frelga: entsprungen literally means "has sprung up" or better "arisen". The whole title of the Carol literally translates as "a rose has sprung up" (I realize, of course that your comment was meant as a joke ^^. Curiously, I think the Ents would have liked or at least been puzzled by one aspect of modern German: compound words. See this English Wikipedia entry for more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donaudamp ... sellschaft)

It's ironic that an atheist is the most regular contributor to this thread

Listen to this - it's gorgeous:

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Some of the greatest music ever written grew out of religious faith.

I remember years ago reading a dismissive New Yorker review of an oratorio that began by saying something like how odd it was that such music was still being performed now that we have all become too sophisticated for those old stories to have any meaning.

If he couldn’t hear the music through his thick coating of sophistication, it was his loss. I knew plenty of atheist musicians back in the day who could hear it just fine.

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“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

Do you remember what the oratorio was?

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I don’t, alas. I remember I’d heard of it, but wasn’t familiar with it.

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“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

It is gorgeous, Jude.

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