"ABIDE WITH ME"

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13172, 3 February 1936, Page 3

"ABIDE WITH ME"

KING GEORGE’S FAVOURITE HYAIN. King George's favourite hymn was “Abide with me,” which both in its ordinary setting and in the lovely arrangement by Liddell, is one of the best known hymns in the English language. When Queen Elizabeth entered St. Paul’s Cathedral to give thanks for the defeat of the Sx?anish Armada, one Henry Lyte, botanist and antiquary, x )r esented her a copy of his book, “Th? Light of Britayne, ” which he dedicated to her. Centuries later, his descendant, Henry Francis Lyte, then a Devonshire clergyn an, wrote ike hymn which was to become the favourite of another monarch. Lyte was born in Scotland, educated in Ireland, and worked in England. An a boy he left Ednam, near Kelso, to go to school at Portora, Enniskillen. He trained as a doctor, but later took Holy Orders, graduating from Trinity College, Dublin. In 1815 he was appointed curate at Taghmon, near Wrexford, but had to resign owing to ill-health. Two years later, at Marazion, in Cornwall, he married Ann Alaxwell, who wrote a chapter of Boswell’s T ‘Life of Johnson.” They were ideally happy together, the only cloud being Lyte s delicacy. But in 1823 they went to Lower Brixham, in Devon, where for 24 years he was a much-loved pastor to the simx>io fisherfolk. It was in the old rectory of Brixham that he wrote the hymns “Pleasant are Thy Courts Above,’’ “Praise, Aly Soul, the King of Heaven,” and other favourites. Descendants of the roses lie planted in the old-fashioned garden above the -sea still T>loom there. When bad weather came, he used to ! climb Berry Hefici. to warn the fishing fleet. Arid to-day the bells .of Brixham C hutch chime,, out the notes .of . his bost-knowYi hymn, as the fishing smacks but out to sea; Oil Sexffenibcr 4, ’JLB47, Lyte know, he Was a dying mart. Hut he wanted to pfeiich just bnc'o. ? rnore in tile little c hufch /which his heart loved. His .peCFple knew it too. and never were \v<,wds, listened to, with more strained attention, than was Lyte’s- last sermon: That night, watching from ' his study window the sun setting in glory across Torbay, he wrote “Abide with me’” : “Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day; Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away ; Change and decay in all aground I sea ; O Thou who changest not, abide with mo.” Two months later, on November 20, 1847, he lay dead at Nice. And the words of his best-known hymn were printed for the first time on his tombstone in the English cemetery there.