And earth hath ne’er so dear a spot
As where I meet with thee.”
In his dying hour he was heard to repeat with broken voice the last stanza of this hymn:
“When death these mortal eyes shall seal,
And still this throbbing heart,
The rending veil shall thee reveal,
All glorious as thou art.”
Other important hymns of Dr. Palmer’s are: “Come, Jesus, Redeemer, abide Thou with me,” “O Jesus, sweet the tears I shed,” “Take me, O my Father, take me,” “O Christ, the Lord of heav’n, to Thee,” “Come, Holy Ghost, in love.” His translation of “Jesu, dulcedo cordium,” the Paris cento of “Jesu, dulcis memoria,” by an unknown Spanish abbess, is most highly esteemed: “Jesus, Thou joy of loving hearts.” This cento is made up of selected verses from “Jesu, dulcis memoria,” from which Edward Caswell took his admirable “Jesus, the very thought of Thee.”
Dr. Leonard Bacon (1802-1881), the son of a missionary among the Indians of Michigan, is noteworthy in two particulars: he issued, at the age of twenty-one, the first collection of missionary hymns printed in America, and he wrote the New England patriotic hymn still used in our churches,
“O God, beneath thy guiding hand