O that will be joyful, joyful, joyful.
O that will be joyful
To meet and part no more;
To meet and part no more,
On Canaan’s happy shore,
And sing the everlasting song
With those who’ve gone before.
James, editor of the 1911 Original Sacred Harp, says that ‘Joyful’ was composed by Rev. Abraham D. Merrell. He was born in New Hampshire 1796 and died in 1878. The first lines of a widely sung parody of this song (or is the above the parody?) are:
The man who has plenty of good peanuts
And giveth his neighbor none,