He shed those tears for thee.
He wept that we might weep;
Each sin demands a tear:
In heaven alone no sin is found,
And there's no weeping there.
The tune of “Dennis” was adapted by Lowell Mason from Johann Georg Nägeli, a Swiss music publisher, composer and poet. He was born in Zurich, 1768. It is told of him that his irrepressible genius once tempted him to violate the ethics of authorship. While publishing Beethoven's three great solo sonatas (Opus 31) he interpolated two bars of his own, an act much commented upon in musical circles, but which does not seem to have cost him Beethoven's friendship. Possibly, like 198 / 162 Murillo to the servant who meddled with his paintings, the great master forgave the liberty, because the work was so good.
Nägeli's compositions are mostly vocal, for school and church use, though some are of a gay and playful nature. The best remembered of his secular and sacred styles are his blithe aria to the song of Moore, “Life let us cherish, while yet the taper glows” and the sweet choral that voices Beddome's hymn.
“MY JESUS, I LOVE THEE.”
The real originator of the Coronation Hymnal, a book into whose making went five years of prayer, was Dr. A.J. Gordon, late Pastor of the Clarendon St. Baptist church, Boston. While the volume was slowly taking form and plan he was wont to hum to himself, or cause to be played by one of his family, snatches and suggestions of new airs that came to him in connection with his own hymns, and others which seemed to have no suitable music. The anonymous hymn, “My Jesus, I Love Thee,” he found in a London hymn-book, and though the tune to which it had been sung in England was sent to him some time later, it did not sound sympathetic. Dissatisfied, and with the ideal in his mind of what the feeling should be in the melody to such a hymn, he meditated and prayed over the words till in a moment of inspiration the beautiful air sang itself to him* which with its simple concords has carried the hymn into the chapels of every denomination.