
First Line: | Let me be with Thee where Thou art |
Author: | Charlotte Elliott |
Language: | English |
Copyright: | Public Domain |
Let me be with Thee where Thou art. Charlotte Elliott. [Heaven Anticipated and Desired.] This hymn, which is usually attributed to the first edition of Miss Elliott's Hours of Sorrow, &c, 1836, really appeared in her brother's Brighton Psalms & Hymns, 3rd thousand, 1839, No. 412, in 4 stanzas of 4 lines, and signed "C. E." It was repeated, with slight alterations, in her Hymns For a Week, 1842 ; and again, slightly altered, in late editions of the Invalid's Hymn Book. The text usually followed by modern editors is that of 1842, as in Lord Selborne's Book of Praise, 1862, where it is given with the change in st. iv., 1. 3, of “life nor death" to "death nor life." The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge Church Hymns, 1871, is an exception in favour of several changes in the text, and Kennedy's, 1863, is the greatest departure from the original. The American books vary in their texts in common with those of Great Britain.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)