Nearer to Thee

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Back from the long ago

Author: Jessie Brown Pounds
Tune: [Back from the long ago]
Published in 16 hymnals

Audio files: MIDI

Representative Text

1 Back from the Long Ago,
Distant and dim,
Breathing a warning low,
Comes a sweet hymn;
Fraught with my childhood dreams,
Is it for me;
Sacred and tender seems,
“Nearer to thee;
“Still all my song shall be,
Nearer, my God, to thee,
Nearer, my God, to thee,
Nearer to thee.”

2 Oft in an hour of bliss,
Comes the refrain,
Biding me find in this,
Heavenly gain;
Even in my griefs I say:
Father, I flee
Out of this clouded way,
Nearer to thee;
“So by my woes to be,
Nearer, my God, to thee,
Nearer, my God, to thee,
Nearer to thee.”

3 Thus let me daily rise
Nearer thy throne,
Nearer the lasting prize
Kept for thine own;
E’en when Death’s heralds come,
Lord, may they be
Angels to lead me home,
Nearer to thee;
“Angels to beckon me,
Nearer, my God, to thee,
Nearer, my God, to thee,
Nearer to thee.”

Source: Pearls of Praise #89

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Author: Jessie Brown Pounds

Jessie Brown Pounds was born in Hiram, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland on 31 August 1861. She was not in good health when she was a child so she was taught at home. She began to write verses for the Cleveland newspapers and religious weeklies when she was fifteen. After an editor of a collection of her verses noted that some of them would be well suited for church or Sunday School hymns, J. H. Fillmore wrote to her asking her to write some hymns for a book he was publishing. She then regularly wrote hymns for Fillmore Brothers. She worked as an editor with Standard Publishing Company in Cincinnati from 1885 to 1896, when she married Rev. John E. Pounds, who at that time was a pastor of the Central Christian Church in Indianapolis. A memorab… Go to person page >

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First Line:	Back from the long ago
Title:	Nearer to Thee
Author:	Jessie Brown Pounds
Language:	English
Refrain First Line:	Still all my song shall be
Copyright:	Public Domain