Farewell to a Friend departed

Top Media Text Author Text Info Notes Tune Timeline Page Scans Instances

Thou art gone to the grave, but we will not deplore thee

Author: Reginald Heber
Published in 306 hymnals

Printable scores: PDF, MusicXML
Audio files: MIDI

Representative Text

1 Thou art gone to the grave, but we will not deplore thee,
Though sorrow and darkness encompass the tomb:
The Saviour has passed through its portals before thee,
The lamp of his love is thy guide through the gloom,
The lamp of his love is thy guide through the gloom.

2 Thou art gone to the grave; we no longer behold thee,
Nor tread the rough path of the world by thy side;
The wide arms of mercy were spread to infold thee,
And sinners may hope, since the Sinless hath died.

3 Thou art gone to the grave, but 'twere wrong to deplore thee,
When God was thy ransom, thy guardian, and guide;
He gave thee, he took thee, and soon he'll restore thee,
Where death hath no sting, since the Saviour hath died.

Source: The Seventh-Day Adventist Hymn and Tune Book: for use in divine worship #971

All representative texts • Compare texts ^ top

Author: Reginald Heber

Reginald Heber was born in 1783 into a wealthy, educated family. He was a bright youth, translating a Latin classic into English verse by the time he was seven, entering Oxford at 17, and winning two awards for his poetry during his time there. After his graduation he became rector of his father's church in the village of Hodnet near Shrewsbury in the west of England where he remained for 16 years. He was appointed Bishop of Calcutta in 1823 and worked tirelessly for three years until the weather and travel took its toll on his health and he died of a stroke. Most of his 57 hymns, which include "Holy, Holy, Holy," are still in use today. -- Greg Scheer, 1995… Go to person page >

^ top

First Line:	Thou art gone to the grave, but we will not deplore thee
Title:	Farewell to a Friend departed
Author:	Reginald Heber
Meter:	13.11.12.12
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

^ top

Notes

Thou art gone to the grave! but we will not deplore thee. Bishop R. Heber. [Death and Burial.] Was written in Decem¬ber, 1818, on the death of his daughter, aged six months. (Memoirs, volines i. p. 501.) So far as is at present known its earliest publication was in the Rev. Carus Wilson's Friendly Visitor, for August, 1824. It is also found, with variations, in stanza iii. in a volume of Sacred Poetry, Edin.: W. Oliphant, N.D. In 1827, the text, as in the Friendly Visitor, was included in Bp. Heber's posthumous Hymns, p. 150. It is rendered into Latin by R. Bingham in his Hymnologia Christiana Latina, 1871, as "Mortuos inter resides, et absens."

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

^ top