H.W.F.
Mason, Mrs. Caroline Atherton (Briggs), Marblehead, Massachusetts, July 27, 1823—June 13, 1890, Fitchburg, Massachusetts. In 1853 she married Charles Mason, a lawyer living in Fitchburg. She published in 1852 a volume of poems entitled Utterance: or Private Voices to the Public Heart, and after her death another collection was published, her Lost Ring and Other Poems, 1891.
Three of her hymns have had considerable use.
1. I cannot walk in darkness long, (Evening)
This begins with stanza V of her poem on Eventide, “At cool of day with God I walk,” in her Lost Ring, p. 165.
2. O God I thank Thee for each sight, (The Joy of Living)
A cento of 4 stanzas, from her poem “A Matin Hymn” beginning “I lift the sash and gaze abroad,” in her Lost Ring, p. 164.
3. The changing years, eternal God, (Adoration)
Written for the Bicentennial of the First Congregational Church, Marblehead, August 13, 1884. In her Lost Ring it begins “The changing centuries, O God,”.
Of these hymns no. 2 has had considerable use. It is included in Hymns of the Church Universal, 1891; the New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914; the Pilgrim Hymnal, 1935; Hymns of the Spirit, 1937.
J. 1669 H.W.F.
Miles, Sarah Elizabeth (Appleton) Boston, Massachusetts, March 28, 1807—January 3, 1877, Brattleboro, Vermont. She married Solomon P. Miles. In 1827 she printed in the Christian Examiner a hymn beginning,
Thou, who didst stoop below,
which passed into a number of hymn books of the period, and in 1828, in the same periodical she printed a poem in 4 stanzas, C.M.D., which S. Longfellow and S. Johnson, in their second hymn-book, Hymns of the Spirit, 1864, divided into two hymns, of 2 stanzas each, the first beginning
The earth, all light and loveliness,