But round God’s white throne we shall bow.
James, editor of the Original Sacred Harp, 1911, says: “The hymn is from a very old edition, 1820. It is not in any of the hymn books found since that date.” The quick triple time of the tune indicates Irish influence and, probably, source. Similar is ‘Royal Band’, OSH 360.
As to the remarkable rhyme or assonance in the text—see for example the repeated “o” assonance in the first lines—I am reminded of what Cecil Sharp said of this feature in Anglo-Irish ballads of this sort, namely, that “They imitate with more or less success in an alien tongue the assonantal Gaelic rhymes with which their makers, whether hedge-schoolmasters or peasants, were doubtless familiar.” The same metrical trend is in ‘Green Grows the Laurel’, Sharp, ii., 211.
No. 40
[POOR WAYFARING STRANGER], GOS 714
Pentatonic, mode 2 minorized (I — 3 IV V — VII)
I am a poor wayfaring stranger
While trav’ling through this world of woe,
Yet there’s no sickness, toil nor danger
In that bright world to which I go.