I know not if or dark or bright

Representative Text

1. I know not if or dark or bright
Shall be my lot;
If that wherein my hopes delight
Be best or not.

2. It may be mine to drag for years
Toil’s heavy chain,
Or day and night my meat be tears
On bed of pain.

3. Dear faces may surround my health
With smiles and glee,
Or I may dwell alone, and mirth
Be strange to me.

4. My bark is wafted to the strand
By breath divine,
And on its helm there rests a hand
Other than mine.

5. One who was known in storms to sail
I have on board;
Above the roaring of the gale
I hear my Lord.

6. Safe to the land! safe to the land!
The end is this,
And then with Him go hand in hand,
Far into bliss.

Source: The Cyber Hymnal #2855

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Author: Henry Alford

Alford, Henry, D.D., son of the Rev. Henry Alford, Rector of Aston Sandford, b. at 25 Alfred Place, Bedford Row, London, Oct. 7, 1810, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating in honours, in 1832. In 1833 he was ordained to the Curacy of Ampton. Subsequently he held the Vicarage of Wymeswold, 1835-1853,--the Incumbency of Quebec Chapel, London, 1853-1857; and the Deanery of Canterbury, 1857 to his death, which took. place at Canterbury, Jan. 12, 1871. In addition he held several important appointments, including that of a Fellow of Trinity, and the Hulsean Lectureship, 1841-2. His literary labours extended to every department of literature, but his noblest undertaking was his edition of the Greek Testament, the result… Go to person page >

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Text Information

Text Information

First Line:	I know not if or dark or bright
Author:	Henry Alford
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

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I know not if the dark or bright. H. Alford. [Resignation.] Written in 1862, and printed in Macmillan's Magazine, 1863, in 7 stanzas of 4 lines. In 1865 it was included in the author's Poetical Works, and in 1884 in Horder's Congregational Hymns.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

Notes

I know not if the dark or bright. H. Alford. [Resignation.] Written in 1862, and printed in Macmillan's Magazine, 1863, in 7 stanzas of 4 lines. In 1865 it was included in the author's Poetical Works, and in 1884 in Horder's Congregational Hymns.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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