1 The leaves, around me falling,
Are preaching of decay;
The hollow winds are calling,
Come, pilgrim, come away!
The day, in night declining,
Says I must, too decline;
The year, its life resigning,--
Its lot foreshadows mine.
2 The light my path surrounding,
The loves to which I cling,
The hopes within me bounding,
The joys that round me wing,--
All melt, like stars of even
Before the morning's ray,--
Pass upward into heaven,
And chide at my delay.
3 The friends, gone there before me,
Are calling from on high;
And joyous angels o'er me
Tempt sweetly to the sky;
Why wait, they say, and wither
'Mid scenes of death and sin?
Oh, rise to glory, hither,
And find true life begin.
Source: The Voice of Praise: a collection of hymns for the use of the Methodist Church #984
Lyte, Henry Francis, M.A., son of Captain Thomas Lyte, was born at Ednam, near Kelso, June 1, 1793, and educated at Portora (the Royal School of Enniskillen), and at Trinity College, Dublin, of which he was a Scholar, and where he graduated in 1814. During his University course he distinguished himself by gaining the English prize poem on three occasions. At one time he had intended studying Medicine; but this he abandoned for Theology, and took Holy Orders in 1815, his first curacy being in the neighbourhood of Wexford. In 1817, he removed to Marazion, in Cornwall. There, in 1818, he underwent a great spiritual change, which shaped and influenced the whole of his after life, the immediate cause being the illness and death of a brother cler… Go to person page >
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