We Three Kings - guitar chords, tabs, and fingerstyle arrangement

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We Three Kings is a song written by John H. Hopkins to the tune Kings of Orient. In this lesson, we cover the guitar chords for this song, sheet music with guitar tabs and also a finger-style guitar arrangement.

Grab your guitar and let’s get started!

How to read the guitar chord charts

To clarify how to read the chord charts in the next section, the top horizontal line represents the high E string and the bottom horizontal line represents the low E string. The vertical lines separate each fret. The numbers in the blue dots tell you which fingers to use on the fretting hand.

For example, on the E minor chord, you use the:

1st finger on the 5th string, 2nd fret
2nd finger on the 4th string, 2nd fret
Circles represent open strings
On some other chords, X means to avoid the string

You can check this link for more on how to read guitar notation symbols.

Guitar chords for We Three Kings

The basic guitar chords for We Three Kings are E minor, B7, D Major, G Major, C Major, and A minor. You can click on the chords with links to learn different ways of playing that chord.

Try the following chords one at a time until you feel comfortable switching between them. These chords will be written above the melody in the next section.

Here are some other resources on chords:

We Three Kings guitar tabs and chords

The sheet music below includes the tabs and chords for We Three Kings with lyrics.

Keep in mind that the chords and melody are meant to be played as separate parts. We’ll look at how to connect these parts later in the arrangement section of this lesson.

The numbers next to some notes on the top staff indicate which fingers to use on the fretting hand. You can refer to this simple guide to understanding music symbols if needed.

By the way, you can get all the PDFs of this song below.

We Three Kings – Get the PDFs

You can also learn the guitar arrangement of this song after the lyrics below.

We Three Kings lyrics

Verse 1:
We three kings of Orient are;
bearing gifts we traverse afar,
field and fountain, moor and mountain,
following yonder star.

Chorus:
O star of wonder, star of light,
star with royal beauty bright,
westward leading, still proceeding,
guide us to thy perfect light.

Verse 2:
Born a King on Bethlehem’s plain,
gold I bring to crown him again,
King forever, ceasing never,
over us all to reign. (Chorus)

Verse 3:
Frankincense to offer have I;
incense owns a Deity nigh;
prayer and praising, voices raising,
worshiping God on high. (Chorus)

Verse 4:
Myrrh is mine; its bitter perfume
breathes a life of gathering gloom;
sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,
sealed in the stone-cold tomb. (Chorus)

Verse 5:
Glorious now behold him arise;
King and God and sacrifice:
Alleluia, Alleluia,
sounds through the earth and skies. (Chorus)

Reference: We Three Kings of Orient Are. hymnary.org

We Three Kings fingerstyle arrangement

This arrangement of We Three Kings shifts between the key of E minor and the relative G Major key signature.

In this section, we are essentially connecting the melody and chords together using a finger picking method of playing. If needed, check out this lesson to learn how to finger pick on guitar.

We Three Kings – Get the PDFs