O Thou who turnest into morning, (1902)
also included in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914.
H.W.F.
Loring, William Joseph, Boston, Massachusetts, October 8, 1795—1841, Boston. He graduated from Harvard College in 1813 and went into business in Boston. He was a lay member of the Unitarian denomination; was president of the Washington Benevolent Society; and was a member of the Horticultural Society. He was probably the author of the hymn beginning,
Why weep for those, frail child of woe,
attributed to “W. J. Loring” in Hedge and Huntington’s Hymns for the Church of Christ, 1853.
H.W.F.
Lowell, James Russell, LL.D., Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 22, 1819—August 12, 1891, Cambridge. Son of Rev. Charles Lowell, minister of the West Church (Unitarian), Boston, he graduated from Harvard College in 1838, and entered upon a literary career as a poet, essayist and scholar. In 1855 he succeeded H. W. Longfellow as Professor of Belles Lettres at Harvard and spent the next two years in Europe to increase his knowledge of southern European languages and literature. On his return he was the first editor of The Atlantic Monthly, 1857-1862, then editor of The North American Review, 1863-1872. He was United States Minister to Spain, 1877-1880, and to Great Britain, 1880-1885. He wrote many essays, addresses and poems. These last were published in a succession of volumes, “A Year’s Life,” 1841; “Poems,” 1844-1854; “The Vision of Sir Launfal,” 1845; “A Fable for Critics,” 1845; “The Biglow Papers,” 1848 and 1867; “The Commemoration Ode,” 1865; “Under the Willows,” 1868; and later volumes, his “Complete Poems” appearing in 1895. Though some of his poems show deep religious feeling he made only a slight and indirect contribution to American hymnody, writing only one hymn and one Christmas carol, although stanzas quarried out of his poems have been used as hymns, as follows:—
1. Men who boast it is that ye
Come of fathers brave and free,
The 1st, 3d and 4th stanzas of his anti-slavery poem, “Stanzas on Freedom,” written in 1844. It was included in this form in The Soldier’s Companion, 1861, in Longfellow and Johnson’s Hymns of the Spirit, 1864, and in part in Songs of the Sanctuary, N. Y. 1865, beginning
They are slaves who will not choose,
2. Once to every man and nation,
In December, 1844, Lowell wrote a poem in 18 stas. of 5 l. entitled “The Present Crisis,” a protest against the war with Mexico. The English hymnnologist, Rev. V. Garrett Horder, took from this poem a number of lines sufficient to make a hymn of 4 stas. which he included, with a few verbal alterations, in his Hymns Supplemental, 1896, and then in his Treasury of Hymns. The English Hymnal included the hymn in 1906, and from this it passed into many collections. In the form commonly used in this country, stanza 1 is that of sta. 5 in the original poem; sta. 2 is that of original sta. 11; sta. 3 is no. 13, original; and sta. 4, part of sta. 6 and part of sta. 8 original. In this form it has had considerable use in this country.
3. Our house, our God, we give to Thee,
Hymn for the dedication of the First Church (Unitarian), Watertown, Massachusetts, on August 3, 1842, in a service in which Rev. Samuel Ripley made the dedicatory prayer and the sermon was preached by Rev. Convers Francis, who had recently left Watertown to accept a professorship at the Harvard Divinity School. Lowell’s Cambridge residence at “Elmwood” was only a short distance from the Watertown line, and Miss Maria White, whom he married in 1844, belonged to the Watertown parish, which suggests the possibility that it was she who persuaded him to write the hymn. It was not included in any of his published works but has been found on the only known copy of the printed program of the service, now owned by the Huntington Library, San Marino, Pasadena, California. It probably was used only on the occasion for which it was written.
4. The ages one great minster seem,
Taken from a poem “Godminster Chimes” which was “Written in aid of a chime of bells for Christ Church, Cambridge,” and published in “Under the Willows,” 1868. From this poem of 7 stas. 8 l., enough lines have been selected and arranged, with a few verbal alterations, to make a hymn on the theme of the Church Universal, in 4 stas. of 4 l.
5. What means this glory round our feet?
A Christmas carol written in 1866 “For the children of the Church of the Disciples”, Boston, (Unitarian), of which [Rev. James Freeman Clarke], q.v., was minister. Of the original 7 stas., five have come into considerable use.
Of the above listed hymns all except no. 3 are in current use in various hymn books. Nos. 2 and 5 are in The Pilgrim Hymnal, 1935; nos. 1, 2, 4 and 5 in the New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, and in Hymns of the Spirit, 1864.