“ABIDE WITH ME”

Waipa Post, Volume 52, Issue 3703, 8 January 1936, Page 7

“ABIDE WITH ME”

THE KING’S FAVOURITE HYMN.

A good many people .were surprised, at the time that the King’s favourite hymn, “ Abide with me,” was not included in the Jubilee Service of Tranksgiving. “ Abide with me,” both in its ordinary seating and in the lovely arrangement by Liddell, is one of the best known hymns in the Engish language. When Queen Elizabeth entered St. Paul’s Cathedral to give thanks for the defeat of the Spanish Armada, one Henry Lyte, botanist and antiquary, presented to her a copy of his book, “The Light of Britayne,” which he had dedicated to her. Centuries later, his descendant, Henry Francis Lyte, then a Devonshire clergyman, wrote the hymn which was to become the favourite of another monarch. BORN NEAR KELSO. Lyte was born in Scotland, educated in Ireland, and worked in England. As a boy he left Ednam, near Kelso, to go to school at Portora, Enniskillen. He trained as a doctor, but latter took Holy Orders, graduating from Trinity College, Dublin. In 1815 he was appointed curate at Tagmon, near Wrexford, but had to resign owing to ill-health. Two years later, at Marazion, in Cornwall, he married Ann Maxwell, who wrote a chapter of Boswell’s “ 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 simple fisher-folk. It was in the old rectory of Brixham that he wrote the hymns “ Pleasant are Thy courts above,” “ Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven,” and other favourites. Descendant); of the roses he planted in the oldfashioned garden above the sea still bloom there.

When bad weather came, he used to climb Berry Head to warn the fishing fleet. And to-day the bells of Brixham Church chime out the notes of his best-known hymn as the fishing smacks put out; to sea. On September 4, 1847, Lyte knew he was a dying man. But he wanted to preach just once more in the little village church which his heart loved. His people knew it too, and never were words listened to with more sprained attention than was Lyte’s last sermon. HOW THE HYMN WAS WRITTEN. 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 around I see; 0 Thou, who changest. not, abide with me.” 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.