When wounded sore the stricken soul

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 >

When wounded sore the stricken soul. Cecil F. Alexander. [Passiontide.] Appeared in her Hymns Descriptive and Devotional, &c, 1858, No. 12, in 5 stanzas of 4 lines, and headed "Passion Week." It was repeated without alteration in her Legend of the Golden Prayers and Other Poems, 1859, p. 141, with the new heading "Touched with the feeling of our infirmities." It is found in many hymnbooks in Great Britain and America, and usually in an unaltered form.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)