The Sun of Righteousness

Author: Cecil Frances Alexander

As a small girl, Cecil Frances Humphries (b. Redcross, County Wicklow, Ireland, 1818; Londonderry, Ireland, 1895) wrote poetry in her school's journal. In 1850 she married Rev. William Alexander, who later became the Anglican primate (chief bishop) of Ireland. She showed her concern for disadvantaged people by traveling many miles each day to visit the sick and the poor, providing food, warm clothes, and medical supplies. She and her sister also founded a school for the deaf. Alexander was strongly influenced by the Oxford Movement and by John Keble's Christian Year. Her first book of poetry, Verses for Seasons, was a "Christian Year" for children. She wrote hymns based on the Apostles' Creed, baptism, the Lord's Supper, the Ten Commandment… Go to person page >

The sick man in his chamber. Cecil F. Alexander, née Humphreys. [During Sickness.] This poem in 14 stanzas of 4 lines was contributed to Rutherford's Lays of the Sanctuary and other Poems, 1859, p. 89, under the title "The Sun of Righteousness." It appeared also in the same year in Mrs. Alexander's Legend of the Golden Prayers, 1858, p. 151. From it the cento "The sick man lieth weary," in Kennedy, 1863, No. 15, is taken. It is composed of stanzas vii., viii., xi.-xiv.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)