Narrow and Strait

Top Media Text Author Text Info Tune Timeline Page Scans Instances

Why do you linger, why do you stay

Author: George F. Root
Tune: [Why do you linger, why do you stay]
Published in 7 hymnals

Printable scores: PDF, Noteworthy Composer
Audio files: MIDI

Representative Text

1 Why do you linger, why do you stay
In the broad road, that most dangerous way?
While right before you, narrow and strait,
Is the bright pathway to Heav’n’s pearly gate?

Refrain:
Narrow and strait, narrow and strait,
Is the bright pathway to Heav’n’s pearly gate.

2 Do you find pleasures, lasting and pure,
In the gay scenes that the thoughtless allure?
While your Redeemer, with love so great,
Points to the way that is narrow and strait? [Refrain]

3 Come, then, belovèd, no longer stay;
Leave the broad highway, O leave it today;
Make your decision, O, do not wait;
Take thou the pathway so narrow and strait. [Refrain]

Source: The Cyber Hymnal #10828

All representative texts • Compare texts ^ top

Author: George F. Root

Root, George F., MUS. DOC, born in Sheffield, Berkshire County, Mass., Aug. 30, 1820. He is much more widely known as a composer of popular music than as a hymn writer. Four of his hymns are in I. D. Sankey's Sacred Songs & Solos, 1878. Nos. 16, 100, 293, and 297. A sympathetic biographical sketch, with portrait, is in The Tonic Sol-Fa Reporter, Sep. 1886. He died Aug. 6, 1895. --John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, Appendix, Part II (1907)… Go to person page >

^ top

Text Information

Text Information

First Line:	Why do you linger, why do you stay
Title:	Narrow and Strait
Author:	George F. Root
Language:	English
Refrain First Line:	Narrow and straight
Copyright:	Public Domain