The summer scenery of Southampton, with its distant view of the Isle of Wight, was believed to have inspired the hymnist sitting at a parlor window and gazing across the river Itchen, to write the stanza—
Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
Stand drest in living green;
So to the Jews old Canaan stood
While Jordan rolled between.
The hymn, “Unveil thy bosom, faithful tomb,” was personal, addressed by Watts “to Lucius on the death of Seneca.”
A severe heart-trial was the occasion of another hymn. When a young man he proposed marriage 69 / 45 to Miss Elizabeth Singer, a much-admired young lady, talented, beautiful, and good. She rejected him—kindly but finally. The disappointment was bitter, and in the first shadow of it he wrote,—
How vain are all things here below,
How false and yet how fair.
Miss Singer became the celebrated Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe, the spiritual and poetic beauty of whose Meditations once made a devotional text-book for pious souls. Of Dr. Watts and his offer of his hand and heart, she always said, “I loved the jewel, but I did not admire the casket.” The poet suitor was undersized, in habitually delicate health—and not handsome.