In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me!
Henry Francis Lyte, 1847.
HENRY FRANCIS LYTE AND HIS SWAN SONG
Many a man who has labored in obscure places, practically unnoticed and unpraised by his own generation, has achieved a fame after his death that grows in magnitude with the passing years.
When Henry Francis Lyte died in 1847, he was little known beyond his humble seashore parish at Lower Brixham, England; but today, wherever his beautiful hymns are sung throughout the Christian world, he is gratefully remembered as the man who wrote “Abide with me.”
In response to a questionnaire sent to American readers recently by “The Etude,” a musical magazine, 7,500 out of nearly 32,000 persons who replied named “Abide with me” as their favorite hymn. It easily took first rank, displacing such older favorites as “Rock of Ages” and “Jesus, Lover of my soul.”
How often we have sung this hymn at the close of an evening service, and a settled peace has come into our hearts as we have realized the nearness of Him who said, “And lo! I am with you always.” Yet, this is not in reality an evening hymn. Its theme is the evening of life, and it was written when Lyte felt the shadows of death gathering about his own head. We catch his meaning in the second stanza:
Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away.
Lyte was always frail in health. He was born in Scotland, June 1, 1793, and was early left an orphan. Nevertheless, despite the handicap of poverty, he struggled through college, and on three occasions won prizes with poems.