“THE EDEN OF LOVE.”
This song, written early in the last century, by John J. Hicks, recalls the name of the eccentric traveling evangelist, Lorenzo Dow, born in Coventry, Ct., October 16, 1777; died in Washington, D.C., Feb. 2, 1834. It was the favorite hymn of his wife, the beloved Peggy Dow, and has furnished the key-word of more than one devotional rhyme that has uplifted the toiling souls of rural evangelists and their greenwood congregations:
How sweet to reflect on the joys that await me
In yon blissful region, the haven of rest,
Where glorified spirits with welcome shall greet me,
And lead me to mansions prepared for the blest.
There, dwelling in light, and with glory enshrouded,
My happiness perfect, my mind's sky unclouded,
I'll bathe in the ocean of pleasure unbounded,
And range with delight through the Eden of love.
The words and tune were printed in Leavitt's Christian Lyre, 1830.
The same strain in the same metre is continued in the hymn of Rev. Wm. Hunter, D.D., (1842) printed in his Minstrel of Zion (1845). J.W. Dadmun's Melodian (1860) copied it, retaining, apparently, 319 / 273 the original music, with an added refrain of invitation, “Will you go? will you go?”
We are bound for the land of the pure and the holy,
The home of the happy, the kingdom of love;
Ye wand'rers from God on the broad road of folly,
O say, will you go to the Eden above?
The old hymn-tune has a brisk out-door delivery, and is full of revival fervor and the ozone of the pines.