“COME, YE DISCONSOLATE.”
By Thomas Moore—about 1814. The poem in its original form differed somewhat from the hymn we sing. Thomas Hastings—whose religious experience, perhaps, made him better qualified than Thomas Moore for spiritual expression—changed the second line,—
Come, at God's altar fervently kneel,
—to—
Come to the mercy seat,
—and in the second stanza replaced—
Hope when all others die,
—with—
Hope of the penitent;
—and for practically the whole of the last stanza—
Go ask the infidel what boon he brings us,
What charm for aching hearts he can reveal.
Sweet as that heavenly promise hope sings us,
“Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal,”
—Hastings substituted—
Here see the Bread of life, see waters flowing
Forth from the throne of God, pure from above!
Come to the feast Love, come ever knowing
Earth has no sorrow but heaven can remove.
Dr. Hastings was not much of a poet, but he could make a singable hymn, and he knew the rhythm and accent needed in a hymn-tune. The determination was to make an evangelical hymn of a poem “too good to lose,” and in that view perhaps the editorial liberties taken with it were excusable. It was to Moore, however, that the real hymn-thought and key-note first came, and the title-line and the sweet refrain are his own—for which the Christian world has thanked him, lo these many years.