There is a safe and secret place. H. F. Lyte. [Ps. xci.] Appeared in his Spirit of the Psalms, 1834, as his C.M. version of Psalm 91, in 5 stanzas of 4 lines. It is very simple and tender, and is in somewhat extensive use in Great Britain and America. In the enlarged edition of the Spirit of the Psalms, 1836, stanza ii. lines 1,2, are altered from:—
“The least, the feeblest there may hide
Uninjured and unawed;"
to
"The least, the feeblest there may bide
Uninjured and unawed."
The change of thought from hiding in terror, to abiding in calm repose is a decided poetic improvement; and is certainly more in accord with the Psalmist's declaration "Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday" (vers. 5, 6), than the original reading.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)