There is a world eye hath not seen (The Spirit World)
included in Longfellow and Johnson’s Hymns of the Spirit, 1864, and there marked Anon., is attributed to Very in Julian’s Dictionary. The hymn is an abbreviated and mutilated version of the beautiful poem beginning
There is a world we have not seen
in A. M. Buchanan’s Folk Hymns of America, pp. 80-81. (See H. W. Foote, Three Centuries of American Hymnody, p. 173). The original form is in three stanzas of eight lines, long metre. The very inferior re-written form is in four stanzas, four lines, common metre. Some of the lines are unchanged from the original, others altered, and the last stanza is a didactic addition. It is altogether improbable that this was done by Very.
J. 1219, 1721 H.W.F.
Very, Washington, Salem, Massachusetts, November 12, 1815—April 28, 1853, Salem. He graduated from Harvard College in 1843, and from the Harvard Divinity School in 1846. After preaching for a year without settlement he opened a private school in Salem, which he conducted until his death. He was brother of [Jones Very], q.v. Putnam in Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith includes three of W. Very’s poetical pieces, one of which
There cometh o’er the Spirit (Spring)
appeared in Longfellow and Johnson’s Book of Hymns, 1846.
J. 1219 H.W.F.
Ware, Rev. Henry, Jr., D.D., Hingham, Massachusetts, April 21, 1794—September 22, 1843, Framingham, Massachusetts. His family was for three generations an outstanding one in the liberal ministry; his father, Dr. Henry Ware, Sr., was called in 1805 from a pastorate in Hingham to serve as Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard; his younger brother, William Ware, was the first minister of what is now All Souls Church, New York; and his son, J. F. W. Ware, was later the minister of Arlington Street Church, Boston. Henry Ware, Jr. graduated with high honors from Harvard in 1812, and after teaching for two years at Phillips Exeter Academy returned to Cambridge, to continue his theological studies. He was licensed to preach on July 31, 1815, but was not ordained as minister of the Second Church in Boston (Unitarian) until January 1, 1817. Never vigorous in body, he offered his resignation in 1829, but the congregation refused to accept it, appointing R. W. Emerson to be assistant minister. In 1830, however, he resigned, to accept an appointment as Professor of Pulpit Eloquence and Pastoral Care at the Harvard Divinity School, a position which he held till 1842. He then moved from Cambridge to Framingham, Massachusetts, where he died a few months later. Harvard gave him the degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1834. In spite of ill health he wrote much, and he was a greatly beloved teacher, whose saintly character commanded the highest respect. For several years he edited the Christian Disciple, established in 1813, and he was author of many printed books, addresses and sermons, listed in the Memoir of him, published by his brother, Dr. John Ware, in 1846. His collected works were published in four volumes in 1847, the first volume including his occasional poems and his hymns. Some of these last reached a high standard of excellence and brought him wide recognition in the liberal churches of Great Britain as well as in this country. No less than eight pieces of his verse were included in Lyra Sacra Americana, published by the British Religious Tract Society in 1868. His hymns are some of the choicest poetical expressions of liberal religious thought in the first period of American Unitarian hymnody, but almost all have dropped out of present use. Most of them will be found in Putnam’s Singers and Songs, etc.