Is it not strange the.darkest hour? J. Keble. [Good Friday.] Published in his Christian Year, 1827, in 10 stanzas of 6 lines. In the American Unitarian Hymns for the Church of Christ, ]853, several lines of this poem are adapted to form a L.M. hymn of 4 stanzas of 4 lines, beginning with Keble's first line. This cento was repeated in the Boston Hymn and Tune Book, 1868.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, Appendix, Part II (1907)