Veni Sancte Spiritus. Verbesserte und erweiterte Uebersetzung durch Dr. M. Luther, 1524.
My prose translation:
1 Come, Holy Ghost, Lord God,
Fill with Your good mercy
The heart, courage, and mind of Your faithful;
Ignite Your burning love in them!
O Lord, by the radiance of Your light
[You] have gathered to the faith
The people of all the tongues of the world
Who would sing praise to You, Lord.
Hallelujah! :,:
2 You holy Light, noble Treasure,
Let us glow [with] the Word of life
And teach us to recognize God rightly,
To call Him Father from the heart.
O Lord, protect [us] from foreign teaching
So that we seek for no master
Other than Jesus with true faith
And trust Him with all our might.
Hallelujah! :,:
3 You holy Desire, sweet Comfort,
Now help us cheerfully and comforted
To remain constantly in Your service;
[Let] misery not carry us away.
O Lord, by Your might, prepare us
And strengthen the foolishness of the flesh
So that we gallantly wrestle here
And are brought through death and life to You.
Halleluja! :,:
Veni Sancte Spiritus. Improved and expanded translation by Dr. M. Luther, 1524.
"Foolishness" is a weak translation for "Blödigkeit" in the third verse. "Blödigkeit" is actually something more like stupidness, but that didn't seem very appropriate for the context.
Also in the third verse, I translated "bringen" as a passive ("are brought"); that's not the form it has, but it doesn't make sense in the active voice ("That we... bring through death and life to You"). There's no object.
This hymn appears as "Come, Holy Ghost, God and Lord!" in The Lutheran Hymnal (#224), Lutheran Worship (#154), and The Lutheran Service Book (#497), although LW and LSB lack the exclamation mark. In all, and as the Gesangbuch notes, the text is sung to "its own tune." Here's the TLH arrangement:
And here's an arrangement from Telemann's Fast allgemeines Evangelisch-Musicalisches Lieder-Buch:
Komm, Heiliger Geist, erfüll die Herzen deiner Gläubigen
und entzünd in ihnen das Feuer deiner göttlichen Liebe,
der du durch Mannigfaltigkeit der Zungen
die Völker der ganzen Welt versammelt hast
in Einigkeit des Glaubens.
Halleluja. :,:
Verdeutschung d. latein. Antiphone: Veni Sancte Spiritus.
My prose translation:
Come, Holy Ghost, fill the hearts of Your believers
And ignite in them the fire of Your divine love,
You Who through the diversity of tongues
Have assembled the peoples of the whole world
In the unity of faith.
Hallelujah. :,:
German translation of the Latin antiphon: Veni Sancte Spiritus.
As far as I can tell, this hymn isn't in The Lutheran Hymnal, Lutheran Worship, or The Lutheran Service Book. According to the Gesangbuch, the text is sung to "its own melody." I don't know the melody, so I might have the line breaks in the wrong places.
Aus dem Lateinischen aufs neue verdeutscht durch Dr. M. Luther, 1524.
(Erste Verdeutschung im 12ten oder 13ten Jahrhundert.)
My prose translation:
1 Come, Creator God, Holy Ghost,
Visit the heart of Your people,
Fill them with mercy, as You know
Your creation to have been formerly.
2 For You are called the Comforter,
The dear Gift of the Most High,
A spiritual Salve directed to us,
A living Spring, Love, and Fire.
3 Ignite for us a light in the mind;
Give to us a desire for love in the heart;
[Grant that] the weak flesh in us, known to You,
Firmly keeps your strength and goodwill.
4 With gifts sevenfold, You are
The finger on God's right hand;
You give the word of the Father quite soon
With tongues in all lands.
5 Drive the cunning of the foe far from us;
Cause peace in us [by] Your mercy
So that we gladly follow Your direction
And avoid harm to the soul.
6 Teach us to know the Father well
And Jesus Christ His Son
So that we become full of faith,
Also to understand You, Spirit.
7 To God the Father be praise and to the Son,
Who rose from the dead;
To the Comforter be done the same,
In eternity, all time.
Newly translated into German from the Latin by Dr. M. Luther, 1524.
(First German translation in the 12th or 13th century.)
I'm not very confident in some parts of my translation of the third verse, particularly the second line.
I had some troubles with the last half of the sixth verse, too. "Verstohen" seems to be an alteration of verstehen so that it rhymes with "Sohn" from earlier in the verse (just as "gethon" is an alteration of "gethan" to rhyme with "Sohn" in the following verse), and "beider" seems to mean more also or and than both.
This hymn appears as "Come, Holy Ghost, Creator Blest" in The Lutheran Hymnal (#233) and The Lutheran Service Book (#498) and as "Creator Spirit, Heavenly Dove" in Lutheran Worship (#156), although in all, the third and fourth verses are flipt compared to what's in the Gesangbuch. All the hymnals pair the text with "its own tune," as the Gesangbuch notes. Here's the arrangement from TLH:
And here's an arrangement from Telemann's Fast allgemeines Evangelisch-Musicalisches Lieder-Buch:
Nothing is dearer to me, nor [am I] conscious of [anything] else
Open the gates of my heart
And send Your Spirit,
Who is called a Comforter,
A Fire, a Dew, a Bond,
A Breath, a Fountain, a Security,
An Oil, a Finger of God.
3 Come, Comforter, help and stand by me;
Come, Fire, and ignite me;
Come, Dew, and be my refreshment;
Come, Bond, and blessedly bind;
Come, Breath, prove Yourself;
Come, Fountain, and moisten me;
Come, Security, turn aside all sorrow;
Come, create joy in me;
Come down, Finger of God.
4 Come, Holy Ghost, true God;
Come, heavenly Desire;
Help me in life and in death;
Let me cling firmly to God.
Make my heart new;
Give me true repentance;
Be the rest of my soul;
Speak to my distress;
Give [me] wisdom to live well.
5 Give faith; let me not forfeit
God's grace through sin;
Give love, hope, and patience;
Give humility to my heart;
Give devotion in prayer
When I walk before God.
Oh, let me direct heart and mind
Only there
Whence comes my help to me.
6 Enlighten for me, You lovely Light,
The dark cave of the heart;
Do not spurn this dwelling place;
Lower Yourself into my soul.
Lord God, I ask You,
Strengthen, revive me,
Be my strength, my counsel,
My comfort, my advocate,
Give joy, make living.
7 Drive out from me the wicked mind,
Help me to overcome my flesh,
And take away the evil will;
Grant me, above all,
That I [may] practice
In the love of my Jesus
And would daily be ready
To go out of this wilderness
To Your throne.
Dr. Gottfr. Wilh. Sacer, +1699.
It's probably not best to translate "du kannst mirs nicht verdenken" as "You cannot blame it on me," but I couldn't find a translation for "verdenken" other than "blame." I'm not sure I have the right sense of the first two lines, anyway.
As far as I can tell, this hymn isn't in The Lutheran Hymnal, Lutheran Worship, or The Lutheran Service Book. According to the Gesangbuch, the text is sung to "its own tune."
Here nothing at all is effective but love and mercy;
Christ has served us
With atonement and reconciliation.
3 Your Fatherly sense is affected
By the great misery that we
Are fallen here through Adam's fall.
By this fall is the power
Of the evil spirit, unfortunately!, brought
Upon him and upon us all.
4 We hold, Lord, to our salvation
And are certain that we
Will remain Your portion in Christ,
We who by His death and blood
Believe faithfully to have
The heir of Heaven and the highest good.
5 And that is also a work of mercy
And the power of Your Holy Ghost;
In us is no capability.
How soon would our belief and faith
Lie in the ashes
If You, Lord, would not stand by us!
6 Your Spirit maintains the light of our faith
When all the world guards against it
With storm and many weapons;
And even when the prince of the world
Sets himself against us in the field,
He can yet manage nothing.
7 Where God's Spirit is, there is victory;
Where this One helps, there will the war
Certainly turn out well.
What are the kingdom and position of Satan?
When God's kingdom raises its hand,
Everything falls to ruin.
8 He tears the band of hell in two;
He comforts and makes the heart free
From everything that makes us sick.
When the weather of disaster terrifies us,
Then He is the One Who protects and covers us
Much better than one thinks.
9 He makes the bitter cross sweet,
Is our Light in darkness,
Leads us as His sheep,
Holds over us His shield and power
So that in deep night
His flock [may] sleep with peace and quiet.
10 The Spirit, Whom God gives from Heaven,
Who leads everyone who loves Him
On well-paved paths;
He sets and directs out foot
So that it must not step otherwise
Than where one finds blessing.
11 He sends and equips
The servants, who in this life
Build the house of the Lord;
He adorns their hearts, mouths, and mind;
For our best, lets be shown to them
What is unknown to us.
12 He opens the gate of our heart
When they [the servants] sow His word in our ear
As noble seed;
He gives strength to the same word,
And when it falls, He brings it forth
And lets it grow well.
13 He teaches us the fear of the Lord,
Loves purity, and lives gladly
In devout, chaste souls;
What is humble, what honors virtue,
What does penance and becomes converted,
That would He choose.
14 He is and remains always faithful
And stands by us even in death,
When all things stand apart;
He alleviates our last agony,
Lets us go confidently and cheerfully
Into the hall of Heaven.
15 Oh, blessed [is he] who in this world
Lets this Guest set up
House and tent in his soul!
[He] who receives Him in this time
Will He carry there in God's refuge
To eternal joy.
16 Now, Lord and Father of all good,
Hear our wish, pour in our mind
All of these gifts;
Give Your Spirit, Who governs us here
And refreshes us there
Forever in eternal life.
Paul Gerhardt, 1666.
There are a few words near the beginning of the third verse for which I couldn't find translations that fit this particular context very well, so while I have the basic sense, I'm not sure my translation conveys the full meaning.
I'm not very confident in my translation of the second half of the fourth verse or the second half of the eleventh verse.
I had to shuffle some elements in the fifteenth and sixteenth verses to get smoother English translations (I'll admit they're still a bit rough), and I'm not very confident in my translation of "geuß" in the sixteenth verse as "pour."
As far as I can tell, this hymn isn't in The Lutheran Hymnal, Lutheran Worship, or The Lutheran Service Book. According to the Gesangbuch, the text is sung to the tune "Kommt her zu mir, spricht." Here's an arrangement from TLH:
And here's an arrangement from Telemann's Fast allgemeines Evangelisch-Musicalisches Lieder-Buch: