As many may already know, Vaughan Williams was an agnostic, having evolved from atheism early in his life. Nevertheless, he composed a vast amount of religious music, even in his atheistic years, turning out works for church services, hymns, hymn settings and harmonizations, and various other compositions. This short motet uses text from Psalm 34:8, and is marked Andante sostenuto. It is scored for unaccompanied chorus, with optional organ. When used, the organ plays a brief introductory passage.

Vaughan Williams captures the consoling nature of the text with unabashedly lovely music, whose flowing, soaring vocal line is richly Romantic. The choral writing is unison at the outset, but then turns polyphonic, not only imparting a sense of greater color and harmonic warmth, but adding subtle contrapuntal elements to forge a musical fabric of great beauty. The text of the Psalm begins, "O taste and see that the Lord is good," but Vaughan Williams makes minor changes here and throughout ("O taste and see how gracious the Lord is"). In the end, one must assess this motet as a masterful creation, and while some will decry its conservative expressive language, especially for its mid-twentieth-century appearance, it cannot be faulted in any significant way.

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