Desiring to Praise God

Representative Text

1 Almighty Author of our frame,
To thee our vital pow'rs belong;
Thy praise, (delightful, glorious theme!)
Demands our heart, our life, our tongue.

2 Our hearts, our lives, our tongues, are thine:
O be thy praise their best employ!
But may our songs with angels join,
Nor sacred awe forbid the joy!

3 Thy glories, the seraphick lyre,
On all its strings attempts in vain;
Then how shall mortals dare aspire,
In thought, to try th' unequal strain?

4 Yet the Sov'reign of the skies
To mortals bends a gracious ear;
Nor the mean tribute will despise,
If offer'd with a heart sincere.

5 Great God, accept the humble praise,
And guide our heart, and guide our tongue,
While to thy name we trembling raise
The grateful, though unworthy, song.

Source: A Collection of Psalms and Hymns for Publick Worship #LXV

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Author: Anne Steele

Anne Steele was the daughter of Particular Baptist preacher and timber merchant William Steele. She spent her entire life in Broughton, Hampshire, near the southern coast of England, and devoted much of her time to writing. Some accounts of her life portray her as a lonely, melancholy invalid, but a revival of research in the last decade indicates that she had been more active and social than what was previously thought. She was theologically conversant with Dissenting ministers and "found herself at the centre of a literary circle that included family members from various generations, as well as local literati." She chose a life of singleness to focus on her craft. Before Christmas in 1742, she declined a marriage proposal from contemporar… Go to person page >

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Text Information

Text Information

First Line:	Almighty author of my frame
Title:	Desiring to Praise God
Author:	Anne Steele (1760)
Publication Date:	1760
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Notes

Almighty Author of my frame. Anne Steele. [Praise.] The first hymn of her Poems on Subjects chiefly Devotional, 1760, vol. i. pp. 1-2, in 5 stanzas of 4 lines, and entitled "Desiring to praise God." It was repeated in the new edition of the same, 1780, pp. 1-2, and again in Sedgwick's reprint of her Hymns, &c, 1863. It came into common use through the Bristol Baptist Collection of Hymns of Ash and Evans, 1769, No. 40. Its modern use, except in America, is very limited.

-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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