Scripture · Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Psalm 57:8
May Morning on Magdalen College Tower, Oxford (smaller version)
Awake, my glory! Awake, O harp and lyre! I will awaken the dawn.
The singers meet the first light above Oxford’s rooftops. Hunt went up Magdalen Tower before dawn with his smaller canvas, making the ceremony’s early hour part of the labor of painting it.
What does May Morning on Magdalen College Tower, Oxford (smaller version) show?
White surplices, flowers, music sheets, and carved pinnacles gather against a sky streaked with small clouds. The crowded roof brings individuals close to us while the landscape falls away beyond the parapet. This Birmingham version differs in its grouping of figures from the larger Lady Lever painting; the two should not be identified only by their shared title.
Hunt’s interpretation of the custom was wider than its Christian hymn. He speculated about ancient sun worship and included a turbaned Parsee figure among the college men. That is the artist’s account of possible origins, not an established history of the ceremony. The painted company invites attention to people who stand together at dawn without necessarily understanding it in identical ways.
Featured in: William Holman Hunt’s Bible Paintings: A Goat, a Gun and The Light of the World
What does Psalm 57:8 mean?
Psalm 57 places its dawn song after a cry for mercy amid danger. The speaker’s heart becomes steadfast and calls harp and lyre to awake. The promise to awaken the dawn is active praise offered before the circumstances are described as safe.
Our pairing with the college ceremony is thematic. The psalm praises God, rather than the rising sun, and is not identified here as the text being sung on the tower. That distinction lets the bright morning connect the works without making Hunt’s speculation about the ritual’s origins into biblical teaching.
Psalm 57:8 brings praise at dawn into conversation with the tower ceremony, without claiming it is the choir’s hymn.
Sources
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (1907P132); oil on canvas, 48.9 × 38.8 cm.
William Holman Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, vol. II (1905). The artist’s retrospective account; passages and page references recorded in the accompanying publication research.
Hunt’s Bible paintings: artwork history and sources. Researched manuscript and cited primary accounts; publication review October 15, 2026.
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