How glad the tone when summer's sun

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How glad the tone when summer's sun

Author: James Richardson
Tune: BRATTLE STREET
Published in 18 hymnals

Representative Text

1 How glad the tone when summer's sun
Wreathes the gay world with flowers,
And trees bend down with golden fruit,
And birds are in the bowers!

2 The moon sends silent music down
Upon each earthly thing;
And always, since creation's dawn,
The stars together sing.

3 Shall man remain in silence, then,
While all beneath the skies
The chorus joins? no, let us sing,
And, while our voices rise,

4 Oh, let our lives, great God, breathe forth
A constant melody;
And every action be a tone
In that sweet hymn to thee!

Source: The Voice of Praise: a collection of hymns for the use of the Methodist Church #988

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Author: James Richardson

Richardson, James, son of the Hon. James Richardson, of Dedham, Massachusetts, was born in that town May 25, 1817, and graduated at Harvard College, 1837. After being engaged, first as a clerk of the county courts, and then in teaching, he entered the Divinity School at Cambridge, where he graduated in theology in 1845. Subsequently he was Unitarian Pastor at Southington, Connecticut, and then of the Unitarian Society in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Ill health compelled him to retire from his pastoral work to Dedham. During the war he joined himself to the hospitals at Washington, where he died Nov. 10, 1863. Mr. Richardson was well known as an Essayist, Poet, and Preacher. Two of his hymns, from Longfellow and Johnson's Book of Hymns, 1848, a… Go to person page >

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