Come unto me and rest,
Lay down, thou weary one, lay down
Thy head upon My breast:
I came to Jesus as I was,
Weary and worn and sad,
I found in Him a resting-place,
And He has made me glad.
THE TUNE.
The old melody of “Evan,” long a favorite; and since known everywhere through the currency given to it in the Gospel Hymns, has been in many collections connected with the words. It is good congregational psalmody, and not unsuited to the sentiment, taken line by line, but it divides the stanzas into quatrains, which breaks the happy continuity. “Evan” was made by Dr. Mason in 1850 from a song written four years earlier by Rev. William Henry Havergal, Canon of Worcester Cathedral, Eng. He was the father of Frances Ridley Havergal.
The more ancient “Athens,” by Felice Giardini (1716–1796), author of the “Italian Hymn,” has clung, and still clings lovingly to Bonar's hymn in many communities. Its simplicity, and the involuntary accent of its sextuple time, exactly reproducing the easy iambic of the verses, inevitably made it popular, and thousands of older singers today will have no other music with “I heard the voice of Jesus say.”