One of the most widely-read poets in her time, Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney (September 1, 1791 - June 10, 1865) published fifty-nine books of poetry and prose. She was born in Norwich, Connecticut. the daughter of a gardener, and one of his wealthy employers paid for her education at a private school. She opened a school for girls in Norwich (sources date its founding to either 1809 or 1811) and she taught there and in Hartford until her marriage in 1819 to Charles Sigourney. She had already published her first book, Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse (1815), but her husband requested that she now publish anonymously.
Lydia agreed to this stipulation and continued to submit to magazines and publish books of her prose and poetry. She initally donated the proceeds from her writing to organizations advancing such social causes as temperance, peace, and abolition, but by the 1830s her husband was no longer entirely able to support their family and she became the primary breadwinner. At that time, she also began to publish under her own name. Her writing was so well known that the publisher of the popular magazine Godey's Lady's Book paid her an honorarium for the use of her name in the masthead beside its other editors (including Sarah Josepha Hale)
, though Sigourney had no editorial duties. The social concerns that she supported continued to appear in her writing, and she was an early advocate for Native American causes.
A number of hymns later identified as hers first appeared in Village Hymns (1824), a Congregationalist collection assembled by Asahel Nettleton for the General Association of Connecticut, and over the years Sigourney's hymns appeared in several other hymnbooks, including Maria Weston Chapman's abolitionist collection, Songs of the Free (1836).
I found today's hymn in a collection titled Lyra Sacra Americana: or, Gems from American Sacred Poetry (1868), and though it probably appeared earlier I do not know whether Sigourney considered it a poem or a hymn. As you know, hymnal editors have often believed such authors' intentions to be relatively unimportant.
Prayer is the dew of faith,
Its raindrop, night and day,
That guards its vital power from death
When cherished hopes decay.
And keeps it 'mid this changeful scene
A bright, perennial evergreen.
Our works, of faith the fruit,
May ripen year by year,
Of health and soundness at the root
An evidence sincere;
Dear Savior! grant your blessing free,
And make our faith no barren tree.
Lydia H. Sigourney, 19th cent.; alt.
Tune: BATH (6.6.8.6.8.8.)
William Henry Cooke, 19th. cent.
(Apparently this meter is rather unusual, as I could only find one tune with a sound file available online. BATH by William Cooke is somewhat acceptable, but probably not the best match.)
Sigourney's autobiography, Letters of Life (1866) was published after her death. Fortunately, she did live to see the end of slavery and the Civil War. Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a memorial poem, including these lines:
She sang alone, ere womanhood had known
The gift of song which fills the air to-day:
Tender and sweet, a music all her own
May fitly linger where she knelt to pray.
Our American Thanksgiving coincides with the end of the traditional harvest time. Abraham Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation, which established the national holiday (thanks in part to the lobbying of Sarah Josepha Hale), made reference to the “blessings of fruitful fields.”
Harvest festivals of one kind or another have been celebrated in many nations and cultures. In England, the custom goes back several centuries, and was originally a secular holiday. The Reverend Robert Hawker was apparently the first to bring the celebration into church, on October 1, 1843. As these Harvest Festivals developed (especially popular in rural churches), hymns and prayers were written for them, and church buildings were decorated with home grown produce. This hymn which dates from those early years, by our old friend Henry Alford, was sung in many churches today (or at least this week).
Come, ye thankful people, come,
Raise the song of harvest home;
All is safely gathered in,
Ere the winter storms begin.
God our Maker doth provide
For our wants to be supplied;
Come to God’s own temple, come,
Raise the song of harvest home.
All the world is God’s own field,
Fruit unto God's praise to yield;
Wheat and tares together sown
Unto joy or sorrow grown.
First the blade and then the ear,
Then the full corn shall appear;
God of harvest, grant that we
Wholesome grain and pure may be.
For the Living God shall come,
And shall take the harvest home;
From the field shall in that day
All offenses purge away,
Give the angels charge at last
In the fire the tares to cast;
But the fruitful ears to store
In God's garner evermore.
Even so, God, quickly come,
Bring thy final harvest home;
Gather thou thy people in,
Free from sorrow, free from sin,
There, forever purified,
In thy presence to abide;
Come, with all thine angels come,
Raise the glorious harvest home.
Henry Alford, 1844, 1865; alt.
Tune: ST. GEORGE'S WINDSOR (7.7.7.7.D.)
George J. Elvey, 1858In the words of the Presbyterian Handbook to the Hymnal (1935), this hymn “sweeps broadly through the whole regime of God's grace manifest in present worldly blessings and eternal salvation.” Alford's text was first matched with this grand tune in the first edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern (1861), though the editors of that book changed the text in ways that he did not approve, leading him to revise it for a collected edition of his own works. Naturally, there have been other revisions over the years. Some modern hymnals omit the third verse.The tune by George Elvey, named for St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle, where he was organist for nearly fifty years, was not written for this tune but they have stayed together in most hymnals for the last 150 years.One Year Ago: All Good Gifts Around Us
Today is the birthday of Sarah Josepha Hale, born in Newport, New Hampshire in 1788, and one of the most influential women of the nineteenth century. She was a schoolteacher before her marriage, and began to write poetry and essays which were published.
Her husband died in 1822, leaving her with five small children to support. Friends from the Freemason lodge to which he had belonged helped her to start a millinery shop with her sister, and also raised money to publish her first book of poetry, The Genius of Oblivion (1823), though she was credited as “a Lady of New Hampshire.” This was followed a few years later by her novel, Northwood (1827), on the subject of slavery (two decades before Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin).
The novel was praised by a Boston Episcopal minister, John Lauris Blake, who asked Hale to move to Boston and become editor of Ladies' Magazine, which he owned (she preferred the title of “editress”). In 1837 the magazine was bought by Louis Antoine Godey and merged with his own publication, Godey's Lady's Book, with Hale as the editor. Godey's became the highest circulation magazine in the country, and Hale purposefully used the magazine as a means of educating women on various topics. She met all the leading activists for the cause of education, publishing their articles and supporting their efforts.
The establishment of Thanksgiving as a national holiday is also attributed to Sarah Hale. Over nearly forty years she wrote letters to state and federal officials to lobby for a nation-wide observance. She had described the sort of celebration she envisioned in her novel Northwood. Various days of thanksgiving had been declared before, the first in 1777, and some states, such as New York, had adopted their own days. The Protestant Episcopal Church (of which Hale was a member) in 1789 had decreed the first Thursday in November as a day of thanks. Hale wrote editorials in support of the holiday in her magazine, such as this one from 1858, which begins with lines from a hymn of thanks by Anna Laetitia Barbauld. Finally, in 1863, Abraham Lincoln decreed the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day in the US.
Hale published more than fifty books in her lifetime, including novels, poetry, and children's literature. Her most well-known poem, Mary had a little lamb, was first published in 1830 in a collection titled Poems for Our Children. It was later set to music by Lowell Mason, a fellow strong advocate of education.
This text by Hale first appeared in Mason's Church Psalmody (1831).
Our Father in heaven, we hallow thy Name;
May thy kingdom holy on earth be the same;
O give to us daily our portion of bread;
It is from thy bounty that all must be fed.
Forgive our transgressions, and teach us to know
That humble compassion which pardons each foe;
Keep us from temptation, from evil and sin,
And thine be the glory, forever! Amen!
Sarah Josepha Hale, 1831
Tune: EXPOSTULATION (11.11.11.11.)
Josiah Hopkins, 1830
A later edition of Church Psalmody suggests the tune FOUNDATION, but that tune had probably not yet been published in 1831. Other tunes that would work (though they are also much better known with other texts) include GORDON and ST. DENIO. However, since there has clearly been no great desire to sing rather than say the Lord's Prayer, this hymn is not particularly well known.
Hale finally retired as the “editress” of Godey's Lady's Book at the age of 89, two years before her death in 1879. The Sarah Josepha Hale Award has been established in her honor, to recognize “a distinguished body of work in the field of literature and letters” by authors and artists with a New England connection.
P.S. The portrait of Hale is by James Reid Lambdin, while the picture below is the work of W.W. Denslow, perhaps best known as the original illustrator of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900).
