Loud was the wind, and wild the tide

Author: Henry Francis Lyte

Lyte, Henry Francis, M.A., son of Captain Thomas Lyte, was born at Ednam, near Kelso, June 1, 1793, and educated at Portora (the Royal School of Enniskillen), and at Trinity College, Dublin, of which he was a Scholar, and where he graduated in 1814. During his University course he distinguished himself by gaining the English prize poem on three occasions. At one time he had intended studying Medicine; but this he abandoned for Theology, and took Holy Orders in 1815, his first curacy being in the neighbourhood of Wexford. In 1817, he removed to Marazion, in Cornwall. There, in 1818, he underwent a great spiritual change, which shaped and influenced the whole of his after life, the immediate cause being the illness and death of a brother cler… Go to person page >

Loud was the wind and wild the tide. H. F. Lyte. [Christ walking on the Sea.] Published in his Poems chiefly Religious, 1833, p. 135, in 2 stanzas of 8 lines, and headed "It is I, be not afraid." In 1853 it was given in the Leeds Hymn Book, No. 292, and subsequently repeated in other collections, as "Who walks the waves in wondrous guise?" This form of the text is in 5 stanzas of 4 lines, the additional stanza being by another hand.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)