There Is a Safe and Secret Place

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There is a safe and secret place

Author: Henry Francis Lyte
Published in 125 hymnals

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Representative Text

1 There is a safe and secret place,
Beneath the wings Divine,
Reserved for all the heirs of grace;
O be that refuge mine!

2 The least and feeblest there may bide,
Uninjured and unawed;
While thousands fall on every side
He rests secure in God.

3 He feeds in pastures, large and fair,
Of love and truth Divine;
O child of God, O glory's heir,
How rich a lot is thine.

4 A hand almighty to defend,
An ear for every call,
An honored life, a peaceful end,
And heaven to crown it all!

Amen.

The Hymnal: Published by the authority of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., 1895

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Author: Henry Francis Lyte

Lyte, Henry Francis, M.A., son of Captain Thomas Lyte, was born at Ednam, near Kelso, June 1, 1793, and educated at Portora (the Royal School of Enniskillen), and at Trinity College, Dublin, of which he was a Scholar, and where he graduated in 1814. During his University course he distinguished himself by gaining the English prize poem on three occasions. At one time he had intended studying Medicine; but this he abandoned for Theology, and took Holy Orders in 1815, his first curacy being in the neighbourhood of Wexford. In 1817, he removed to Marazion, in Cornwall. There, in 1818, he underwent a great spiritual change, which shaped and influenced the whole of his after life, the immediate cause being the illness and death of a brother cler… Go to person page >

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First Line:	There is a safe and secret place
Title:	There Is a Safe and Secret Place
Author:	Henry Francis Lyte
Meter:	8.6.8.6
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Notes

There is a safe and secret place. H. F. Lyte. [Ps. xci.] Appeared in his Spirit of the Psalms, 1834, as his C.M. version of Psalm 91, in 5 stanzas of 4 lines. It is very simple and tender, and is in somewhat extensive use in Great Britain and America. In the enlarged edition of the Spirit of the Psalms, 1836, stanza ii. lines 1,2, are altered from:—

“The least, the feeblest there may hide
Uninjured and unawed;"
to
"The least, the feeblest there may bide
Uninjured and unawed."

The change of thought from hiding in terror, to abiding in calm repose is a decided poetic improvement; and is certainly more in accord with the Psalmist's declaration "Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday" (vers. 5, 6), than the original reading.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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