"Abide with Me" is a Christian hymn by British Anglican cleric Henry Francis Lyte (1793–1847). A prayer for God to stay with the speaker throughout life and in death, it was written by Lyte in 1847 as he was dying from tuberculosis. It is most often sung to the tune "Eventide" by the English organist William Henry Monk (1823–1889).
History
The author of the hymn, Henry Francis Lyte, was an Anglican cleric. He was a curate in County Wexford from 1815 to 1818. According to a plaque erected in his memory in Taghmon Church, he preached frequently at the church in Killurin, about nine miles from there. During that time the rector of Killurin Parish, the Reverend Abraham Swanne, was a lasting influence on Lyte's life and ministry. Later he was vicar of All Saints' Church in Brixham, Devon, England. For most of his life Lyte suffered from poor health, and he would regularly travel abroad for relief, as was customary at that time.
There is some controversy as to the exact dating of the text to "Abide with Me". An article in The Spectator, 3 October 1925, says that Lyte composed the hymn in 1820 while visiting a dying friend. It was related that Lyte was staying with the Hore family in County Wexford and had visited an old friend, William Augustus Le Hunte, who was dying. As Lyte sat with the dying man, William kept repeating the phrase "abide with me...". After leaving William's bedside, Lyte wrote the hymn and gave a copy of it to Le Hunte's family.
The belief is that when Lyte felt his own end approaching twenty-seven years later at the age of 54, as he developed tuberculosis, he recalled the lines he had written so many years before in County Wexford. The Biblical link for the hymn is Luke 24:29 in which the disciples asked Jesus to abide with them "for it is toward evening and the day is spent". Using his friend's more personal phrasing "Abide with Me", Lyte composed the hymn. His daughter, Anna Maria Maxwell Hogg, recounts the story of how "Abide with Me" came out of that context:
Just weeks later, on 20 November 1847 in Nice, then in the Kingdom of Sardinia, Lyte died. The hymn was sung for the first time at Lyte's funeral. Special thanksgiving services to mark Lyte's bicentenary were held in Taghmon and Killurin churches. Although Lyte wrote a tune for the hymn, the most usual tune for the hymn is "Eventide" by William Henry Monk.
Lyrics
The hymn is a prayer for God to remain present with the speaker throughout life, through trials, and through death. The opening line alludes to , "Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent", and the penultimate verse draws on text from , "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?":
Many hymnals omit some of the verses. For example, the compilers of one of the editions of Hymns Ancient and Modern, of which William Henry Monk, the composer of the tune "Eventide", was the original editor, omitted the verse beginning "Thou on my head in early youth didst smile;" for being too personal.
Tune
thumb|Abide with Me (1861)
The hymn tune most often used with this hymn is "Eventide" composed by English organist and church musician William Henry Monk in 1861.
Alternative tunes include:
- "Abide with Me", Henry Lyte, 1847
- "Morecambe", Frederick C. Atkinson, 1870
- "Penitentia", Edward Dearle, 1874
- unnamed, Samuel Liddle (1867-1951), published by Boosey & Co. in 1896; this is the version favoured by Dame Clara Butt.
- "Woodlands", Walter Greatorex, 1916
The principal theme of the fourth movement of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 9 is often noted for its similarity to Monk's "Eventide". Ralph Vaughan Williams composed a descant for the 1925 hymnal, Songs of Praise; also an orchestral prelude ("Two Hymn-Tune Preludes", "1. Eventide") on the tune for the Hereford Festival of 1936. The hymn was also set to music around 1890 by the American composer Charles Ives, and was published in his collection Thirteen Songs in 1958, four years after his death.