Saviour, round Thy footstool bending. Elizabeth Parson, née Booker. [Lent.] This is the most beautiful and pathetic of Mrs. Parson's hymns. It was written for her class for young people at Tavistock, and supplied to J. Curwen in manuscript. It was included in Curwen's Child's Hymn Book, 1840, and subsequently printed in Mrs. Parson's Willing-Class Hymns, No. 9, in 3 stanzas of 6 lines. In the Child's Hymn Book it is in 4 stanzas. There are the following forms of the text in common use:—
(1) that in the Child's Hymn Book, in 4 stanzas; (2) the Willing-Class Hymns, in 3 stanzas; (3) the Methodist Sunday School Hymn Book, 1879, No. 262, where st. i., iii. and v. are the original slightly altered, and st. ii. and iv. are from Hodder's Sunday School Hymn Book; and (4) that in the Silver Street (London) Sunday School Companion, 1880, which is No. 2 with alterations. Through these various forms this hymn is in extensive use.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)