“WHEN FOR ETERNAL WORLDS I STEER.”
It was no solitary experience for hearers in a house of prayer where the famous Elder Swan held the pulpit, to feel a climactic thrill at the sudden breaking out of the eccentric orator with this song in the very middle of his sermon—
When for eternal worlds I steer,
And seas are calm and skies are clear,
And faith in lively exercise,
And distant hills of Canaan rise,
My soul for joy then claps her wings,
And loud her lovely sonnet sings,
“Vain world, adieu!”
With cheerful hope her eyes explore
Each landmark on the distant shore,
The trees of life, the pastures green,
The golden streets, the crystal stream,
Again for joy, she claps her wings,
And loud her lovely sonnet sings,
“Vain world, adieu!”
Elder Jabez Swan was born in Stonington, Ct., Feb. 23, 1800, and died 1884. He was a tireless worker as a pastor (long in New London, Ct.,) and a still harder toiler in the field as an evangelist and as a helper eagerly called for in revivals; and, through all, he was as happy as a boy in vacation. He was unlearned in the technics of the schools, but always eloquent and armed with ready wit; unpolished, but poetical as a Hebrew prophet and as terrible in his treatment of sin. Scoffers and “hoodlums” who interrupted him in his meetings never interrupted him but once.
The more important and canonical hymnals and praise-books had no place for “Sonnet,” as the bugle-like air to this hymn was called. Rev. Jonathan Aldrich, about 1860, harmonized it in his Sacred Lyre, but this, and the few other old vestry and field manuals that contain it, were compiled before it became the fashion to date and authenticate hymns and tunes. In this case both are anonymous. Another (and probably earlier) tune sung to the same words is credited to “S. Arnold,” and appears to have been composed about 1790.