“Lo! a Saviour for the Fallen” finds an appropriate voice in W.M. Robert's tune of “Nesta,” and also, like many others of the same measure, in the much-used minors “Llanietyn,” “Catharine,” and “Bryn Calfaria.”
“O SANCTEIDDIA F'ENAID ARGLWYDD.”
Sanctify, O Lord, my spirit,
Every power and passion sway,
Bid Thy holy law within me
Dwell, my wearied soul to stay;
Let me never
Rove beyond Thy narrow way.
This one more hymn of William Williams is from his “Song of a Cleansed Heart” and is amply provided with tunes, popular ones like “Tyddyn Llwyn,” “Y Delyn Aur,” or “Capel-Y-Ddol” lending their deep minors to its lines with a thrilling effect realized, perhaps, only in the land of Taliessin and the Druids.
The singular history and inspiring cause of one old Welsh hymn which after various mutilations and vicissitudes survives as the key-note of a valued song of trust, seems to illustrate the Providence that will never let a good thing be lost. It is related of the Rev. David Williams, of Llandilo, an obscure but not entirely forgotten preacher, that he had a termagant wife, and one stormy night, when her bickerings became intolerable, he went out in the rain and standing by the river composed in his mind these lines of tender faith: