{illust. caption = CARPATHIA
The Cunard liner which brought the survivors of the Titanic to New York.}
{illust. caption = THE HERO WIRELESS OPERATOR OF THE TITANIC
Photograph of Harold...}
played shortly before, but "Autumn," which is found in the Episcopal hymnal and which fits appropriately the situation on the Titanic in the last moments of pain and darkness there. One line, "Hold me up in mighty waters," particularly may have suggested the hymn to some minister aboard the doomed vessel, who, it has been thought, thereupon asked the remaining passengers to join in singing the hymn, in a last service aboard the sinking ship, soon to be ended by death itself.
Following is the hymn:
God of mercy and compassion!
Look with pity on my pain:
Hear a mournful, broken spirit
Prostrate at Thy feet complain;
Many are my foes, and mighty;
Strength to conquer I have none;
Nothing can uphold my goings
But Thy blessed Self alone.
Saviour, look on Thy beloved;
Triumph over all my foes;
Turn to heavenly joy my mourning,
Turn to gladness all my woes;
Live or die, or work or suffer,
Let my weary soul abide,
In all changes whatsoever
Sure and steadfast by Thy side.
When temptations fierce assault me,
When my enemies I find,
Sin and guilt, and death and Satan,
All against my soul combined,
Hold me up in mighty waters,
Keep my eyes on things above,
Righteousness, divine Atonement,
Peace, and everlasting Love.
It was a little lame schoolmaster, Tyrtaeus, who aroused the Spartans by his poetry and led them to victory against the foe.
It was the musicians of the band of the Titanic—poor men, paid a few dollars a week—who played the music to keep up the courage of the souls aboard the sinking ship.
"The way the band kept playing was a noble thing," says the wireless operator. "I heard it first while we were working the wireless, when there was a rag-time tune for us, and the last I saw of the band, when I was floating, struggling in the icy water, it was still on deck, playing 'Autumn.' How those brave fellows ever did it I cannot imagine."