Lift up your eyes, look round

Author: James Montgomery
Published in 1 hymnal

Representative Text

Lift up your eyes, look round;
The fields to harvest white,
Are bow'd, and shaking to the ground;
Where soon must perish quite,
The sower's seed, the tiller's toil,
The husbandman's abortive trust,
Whose crops ungather'd load the soil,
Down trodden to the dust:
For wide the fields are spread, and far,
And few, and weak, the labourers are.

Lord of the Harvest! now,
Send faithful labourers forth,
To wield the sickle, guide the plough,
Where east, west, south, and north,
Far as the fields of life are spread,
The scythe of Time, at Death's stern doom,
Is reaping harvests for the dead,
To crowd the garner-tomb:
Lord! Lord! a precious remnant save
From death--from death beyond the grave.

Sacred Poems and Hymns

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Author: James Montgomery

James Montgomery (b. Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, 1771; d. Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, 1854), the son of Moravian parents who died on a West Indies mission field while he was in boarding school, Montgomery inherited a strong religious bent, a passion for missions, and an independent mind. He was editor of the Sheffield Iris (1796-1827), a newspaper that sometimes espoused radical causes. Montgomery was imprisoned briefly when he printed a song that celebrated the fall of the Bastille and again when he described a riot in Sheffield that reflected unfavorably on a military commander. He also protested against slavery, the lot of boy chimney sweeps, and lotteries. Associated with Christians of various persuasions, Montgomery supported missio… Go to person page >

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