503. My days are gliding swiftly by
David Nelson, 1793-1844
A hymn written by a preacher while hiding from pursuing slave-holders whose anger and violence were aroused by Nelson’s aggressive anti-slavery views.
David Nelson, a surgeon in the U. S. Army during the war of 1812, left his profession to become a minister, meanwhile owning and operating a plantation in Missouri. After listening to an address on slavery, he declared himself in favor of freeing the slaves and advocated the plan of colonizing them in Africa. This so enraged some of the slave-holders that they drove Nelson from his home. To avoid mob violence, he escaped, reaching, after three days and nights of wandering, the Mississippi River opposite Quincy, Illinois. Hiding there in the bushes, with his pursuers near but unable to find him, the river gliding swiftly before him, he wrote this hymn on the back of old letters he had in his pocket. He was finally rescued by members of the Quincy Congregational Church who, having learned of his plight, took him on a fishing canoe and rowed him across the river, still pursued, to safety and friends, on the hospitable shore of a free state.
MUSIC. SHINING SHORE, one of the composer’s most popular tunes, has been given various arrangements for voice and instruments. Root has written concerning the origin of the tune:
One day, I remember, as I was working at a set of graded part-songs for singing classes, mother passed through the room and laid a slip from one of the religious newspapers before me, saying, “George, I think that would be good for music.” I looked at the poem which began, “My days are gliding swiftly by,” and a simple melody sang itself in my mind as I read. I jotted it down and went on with my work. That was the origin of the music of “The Shining Shore.” Later, when I took up the melody to harmonize it, it seemed so very simple and commonplace, that I hesitated about setting the other parts to it. I finally decided that it might be useful to somebody, and I completed it, though it was not printed until some months afterward. In after years I examined it in an endeavor to account for its great popularity—but in vain. To the musician there is not one reason in melody or harmony scientifically regarded, for such a fact. To him hundreds of others, now forgotten, were better.
For comments on George F. Root, 1820-95, see [Hymn 418].