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How Lovely Are Thy Dwellings Fair

How lovely are Thy dwellings fair!

Author: John Milton
Published in 58 hymnals

Printable scores: PDF, MusicXML
Audio files: MIDI

Representative Text

1 How lovely are Thy dwellings fair!
O Lord of Hosts, how dear
The pleasant tabernacles are,
Where Thou dost dwell so near!
My soul doth long and almost die
Thy courts, O Lord, to see.

2 There ev'n the sparrow, freed from wrong,
Hath found a house of rest;
The swallow there, to lay her young,
Hath built her brooding nest;
Ev'n by Thy altars, Lord of Hosts,
They find their safe abode.

3 Happy who in Thy house reside,
Where Thee they ever praise!
Happy, whose strength in Thee doth bide,
And in their hearts Thy ways!
For God, the Lord, both sun and shield,
Give grace and glory bright.

Source: International Song Service: with Bright Gems from fifty authors, for Sunday-schools, gospel meetings, missionary and young people's societies, prayer-meetings, etc. #163

Author: John Milton

Milton, John, was born in London, Dec. 9, 1608, and died there Nov. 8, 1674. His poetical excellences and his literary fame are matters apart from hymnology, and are fully dealt with in numerous memoirs. His influence on English hymn-writing has been very slight, his 19 versions of various Psalms having lain for the most part unused by hymnal compilers. The dates of his paraphrases are:— Ps. cxiv. and cxxxvi., 1623, when he was 15 years of ago. These were given in his Poems in English and Latin 1645. Ps. lxxx.-lxxxviii., written in 1648, and published as Nine Psalmes done into Metre, 1645. Ps. i., 1653; ii., “Done August 8, 1653;" iii., Aug. 9, 1653; iv. Aug. 10, 1653; v., Aug. 12, 1653; vi., Aug. 13, 1653; vii.Aug. 14, 1653; viii… Go to person page >

Tune

BANGOR (Tansur)

Traditionally used for Montgomery's text and for Peter Abelard's "Alone Thou Goest Forth, O Lord," BANGOR comes from William Tans'ur's A Compleat Melody: or the Harmony of Syon (the preface of which is dated 1734). In that collection the tune was a three-part setting for Psalm 12 (and for Psalm 11 i…

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WALMER ROAD


WINCHESTER OLD

WINCHESTER OLD is a famous common-meter psalm tune, presumably arranged by George Kirbye (b. Suffolk, England, c. 1560; d. Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, England, 1634) from a melody in Christopher Tye's Acts of the Apostles and published in T. Este's The Whole Book of Psalmes (1592) set to Psalm 84. Ki…

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Timeline

Media

The Cyber Hymnal #2462
  • Adobe Acrobat image (PDF)
  • Noteworthy Composer score (NWC)
  • XML score (XML)

Instances

Instances (1 - 2 of 2)

Church Hymnal, Fifth Edition #333

TextScoreAudio

The Cyber Hymnal #2462

Include 56 pre-1979 instances
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