Ah! wretched, vile, ungrateful heart

Author: Anne Steele

Anne Steele was the daughter of Particular Baptist preacher and timber merchant William Steele. She spent her entire life in Broughton, Hampshire, near the southern coast of England, and devoted much of her time to writing. Some accounts of her life portray her as a lonely, melancholy invalid, but a revival of research in the last decade indicates that she had been more active and social than what was previously thought. She was theologically conversant with Dissenting ministers and "found herself at the centre of a literary circle that included family members from various generations, as well as local literati." She chose a life of singleness to focus on her craft. Before Christmas in 1742, she declined a marriage proposal from contemporar… Go to person page >

Ah, wretched, vile, ungrateful heart. Anne Steele. [Lent.] Under the title of "The Inconstant Heart," this hymn was published in her Poems on Subjects chiefly Devotional, 1760, vol. i. p. 119, in 5 stanzas of 4 lines; again in the next edition, 1780; and again in Sedgwick's reprint of her Hymns, 1863. Its use is unknown, or nearly so, in Great Britain, but in America it is given in several of the most important modern collections, including Hatfield's Church Hymn Book, 1872, No. 970, and others.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)