1 It singeth low in every heart,
We hear it each and all;
A song of those who answer not,
However we may call.
2 They throng the silence of the breast;
We see them as of yore,
The kind, the true, the brave, the sweet,
Who walk with us no more.
3 ’Tis hard to take the burden up,
When these have laid it down;
They brightened all the joy of life,
They softened every frown.
4 But, O ’tis good to think of them
When we are troubled sore;
Thanks be to God that such have been,
Though they are here no more!
5 More homelike seems the vast unknown
Since they have entered there;
To follow them were not so hard,
Wherever they may fare.
6 They cannot be where God is not,
On any sea or shore;
Whate’er betides, Thy love abides,
Our God, for evermore.
Source: Northfield Hymnal No. 2 #181
Chadwick, John White, was born at Marblehead, Mass., U.S., Oct. 19, 1840; graduated at the Cambridge Divinity School, July 19, 1864, and ordained minister of the Second Unitarian Church, Brooklyn, N.Y., Dec. 21, 1864. A frequent contributor to the Christian Examiner; The Radical; Old and New; Harper's Magazine; and has published many poems in American periodicals. His hymn on Unity, "Eternal Ruler of the ceaseless round," was written for the graduating class of the Divinity School, Cambridge, June 19, 1864. It is in Horder's Congregational Hymns, 1884. It is a hymn of superior merit. [Rev. W. Garrett Horder]
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)… Go to person page >
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