I'd soar and touch the heavenly strings
And vie with Gabriel while he sings,
In notes almost divine!
THE TUNE.
“Colebrook,” a plain choral; but with a noble movement, by Henry Smart, is the English music to this fine lyric, but Dr. Mason's “Ariel” is the American favorite. It justifies its name, for it has wings—in both full harmony and duet—and its melody feels the glory of the hymn at every bar.
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“ROCK OF AGES CLEFT FOR ME.”
Augustus Montagu Toplady, author of this almost universal hymn, was born at Farnham, Surrey, Eng., Nov. 4, 1740. Educated at Westminster School, and Trinity College, Dublin, he took orders in the Established Church. In his doctrinal debates with the Wesleys he was a harsh controversialist; but his piety was sincere, and marked late in life by exalted moods. Physically he was frail, and his fiery zeal wore out his body. Transferred from his vicarage at Broad Hembury, Devonshire, to Knightsbridge, London, at twenty-eight years of age, his health began to fail before he was thirty-five, and in one of his periods of illness he wrote—
When languor and disease invade
This trembling house of clay,