My Song is Love unknown

My song is Love Unknown
My Saviour’s love to me;
Love to the loveless shown,
That they might lovely be.

I remember somebody singing a solo of the first verse of this hymn here at Trinity some years ago, and finding it very moving. As part of our Songs of Praise service led by members I introduced this hymn. Christine sang the first verse as a solo then all of us, the congregation, joined in.

Nowadays this hymn is sung to a tune called 'Love Unknown'. The tune was written three hundred years after the words by the composer John Ireland at the request of a friend who wanted to include this rediscovered hymn in a hymn book he was compiling.

This hymn was written by Samuel Crossman in 1664 as part of "The Young Man’s Meditation, or Some Few Sacred Poems upon Select Subjects, and Scriptures."

He had been meditating on Chapter 6 and verse 14 of Paul's letter to the Galations ... 'But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.'

The opening line could be the start of an unrequited love song.
My song is Love Unknown.

 But then the next line reveals
My Saviour's love to me.

It is God's love that is unrequited. As the second verse of the hymn reveals
He came from His blest throne
Salvation to bestow;
But men made strange, and none
The longed-for Christ would know: