“EARLY, MY GOD, WITHOUT DELAY.”
This and the five following hymns, all by Watts, are placed in immediate succession, for unity's sake—with a fuller notice of the greatest of hymn-writers at the end of the series.
Early, my God, without delay
I haste to seek Thy face,
My thirsty spirit faints away
Without Thy cheering grace.
In the memories of very old men and women, who sang the fugue music of Morgan's “Montgomery,” still lingers the second stanza and some of the “spirit and understanding” with which it used to be rendered in meeting on Sunday mornings.
So pilgrims on the scorching sand,
Beneath a burning sky,
Long for a cooling stream at hand
And they must drink or die.