As the canonisation of John Henry Newman approaches on October 13, parishes will be preparing to sing his beloved hymns. Count on hearing Praise to the Holiest on that Sunday, if not also Lead, Kindly Light and Firmly I Believe and Truly. But whereas these three masterpieces are rightly his best known, Newman also wrote and translated many other hymns during his life, and music directors and parish priests may wish to consider these as additions to the old favourites. Most of Newman’s hymns can be found first as poems in two collections of poetry published during his life, the Lyra Apostolica of 1836 (published before his conversion, with other Oxford Movement friends), and the Verses on Various Occasions of 1868 after his conversion and founding of the oratory. Various of these poems made appearances as hymns in one form or another, and around 30 can be found in an astonishing range of hymnals spanning the Christian world from Mennonites to Unitarians, and Anglicans to Anabaptists, witnessing to the ecumenical reach of Newman’s poetic expression of faith. His knowledge of and love for the Church Fathers is one of the great themes of Newman’s life and especially of his conversion. His intimate familiarity with the writings of St Ambrose, St Gregory the Great and others extended to the great hymns attributed to them and used by the Church in the Divine Office. In fact, his translations of the office hymns, made in 1836-8, take up 62 pages of Verses on Various Occasions. While the versifying of some of the translations is sometimes a little forced and the language occasionally archaic, some are worth taking up again – his simple version of the Compline hymn Te Lucis Ante Terminum, for example, is rather touching: