From a prominent political family, and himself a diplomat and ambassador to Washington during the years 1912-1918 (where he was unsuccessful partly because of his paranoid phobia of German spies), Spring-Rice (1859-1918) died on the way back to Europe and is buried in Ottawa. A first version, ‘Urbs Dei’ was written as a poem in 1908, when Spring-Rice was in British Embassy in Stockholm. The subtitle, ‘The Two Fatherlands’ indicates the theme, common in British imperialist hymns, of joint national and religious loyalty (as in Jerusalem).

A 1918 rewritten version, tempered in the light of the enormous war casualties, was used by the eminent composer Gustav Holst as words to his hymn tune ‘Thaxted’ (named after the village where he lived, and also the theme of the ‘Jupiter’ movement of his The Planets) in 1921. After its first performance in 1925 it became a standard at Armistice memorial services. It also became a popular hymn after having been included in Ralph Vaughan Williams’ collection Songs of Praise (1926)