O Little Town of Bethlehem is a popular Christmas carol. The text was written by Phillips Brooks (1835–1893), an Episcopal priest, rector of the Church of the Holy Trinity, Philadelphia. He was inspired by visiting the village of Bethlehem in the Sanjak of Jerusalem in 1865. Three years later, he wrote the poem for his church and his organist, Lewis Redner, added the music. Redner's tune, simply titled "St. Louis", is the tune used most often for this carol in the United States. Redner recounted the story of his composition in 1924:
My recollection is that Richard McCauley, who then had a bookstore on Chestnut Street west of Thirteenth Street, printed it on leaflets for sale. Rev. Dr. Huntington, rector of All Saints' Church, Worcester, Mass., asked permission to print it in his Sunday-school hymn and tune book, called The Church Porch, and it was he who christened the music 'Saint Louis.'
In the British Commonwealth, and sometimes in the U.S. (especially in the Episcopal Church), the English hymn tune "Forest Green" is used instead. "Forest Green" was adapted by Ralph Vaughan Williams from an English folk ballad called "The Ploughboy's Dream" which he had collected from a Mr. Garman of Forest Green, Surrey in 1903. Henry Garman was born in 1830 in Sussex, and in the 1901 census was living in Ockley, Surrey; Vaughan Williams' manuscript notes he was a "labourer of Forest Green near Ockley - Surrey. (Aged about 60?)", although Mr Garman would have been nearer 73 when he recited the tune. The tune has a strophic verse structure and is in the form A-A-B-A. Adapted into a hymn tune harmonised by Vaughan Williams, it was first published in the English Hymnal of 1906.
O little town of Bethlehem
How still we see thee lie
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting light
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight
How silently, how silently
The wondrous gift is given
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heaven
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell
O come to us, abide with us
Our Lord Emmanuel
No ear may hear his coming
But in this world of sin
Where meek souls will receive Him
Still the dear Christ enters in.