There is a safe and secret place. H. F. Lyte. [Ps. xci.] Appeared in his Spirit of the Psalms, 1834, as his C.M. version of Psalm 91, in 5 stanzas of 4 lines. It is very simple and tender, and is in somewhat extensive use in Great Britain and America. In the enlarged edition of the Spirit of the Psalms, 1836, stanza ii. lines 1,2, are altered from:—
“The least, the feeblest there may hide
Uninjured and unawed;"
to
"The least, the feeblest there may bide
Uninjured and unawed."
The change of thought from hiding in terror, to abiding in calm repose is a decided poetic improvement; and is certainly more in accord with the Psalmist's declaration "Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday" (vers. 5, 6), than the original reading.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
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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