1 Lord, in thy name thy servants plead,
And thou hast sworn to hear;
Thine is the harvest, thine the seed,
The fresh and fading year.
2 Our hope, when autumn winds blew wild,
We trusted, Lord, with thee;
And still, now spring has on us smiled,
We wait on thy decree.
3 The former and the latter rain,
The summer sun and air,
The green ear, and the golden grain,
All thine, are ours by prayer.
4 Thine too by right, and ours by grace,
The wondrous growth unseen,
The hopes that soothe, the fears that brace,
The love that shines serene.
5 So grant the precious things brought forth
By sun and moon below,
That thee in thy new heaven and earth
We never may forego.
Source: The New English Hymnal #126
Keble, John, M.A., was born at Fairford, in Gloucestershire, on St. Mark's Day, 1792. His father was Vicar of Coln St. Aldwin's, about three miles distant, but lived at Fairford in a house of his own, where he educated entirely his two sons, John and Thomas, up to the time of their entrance at Oxford. In 1806 John Keble won a Scholarship at Corpus Christi College, and in 1810 a Double First Class, a distinction which up to that time had been gained by no one except Sir Robert Peel. In 1811 he was elected a Fellow of Oriel, a very great honour, especially for a boy under 19 years of age; and in 1811 he won the University Prizes both for the English and Latin Essays. It is somewhat remarkable that amid this brilliantly successful career,… Go to person page >| First Line: | Lord, in Thy name Thy servants plead |
| Title: | Lord, in Thy Name Thy servants plead |
| Author: | John Keble (1856) |
| Meter: | 8.6.8.6 |
| Language: | English |
| Copyright: | Public Domain |
Lord, in Thy Name Thy servants plead. J. Keble. [Rogation Days.] Written at Malvern, Aug. 4, 1856, and first published in the Salisbury Hymn Book, 1857, No, 105, in 6 stanzas of 4 lines, including a doxology. This was repeated with slight changes in the Rev. F. Pott's Hymns, &c, 1861; the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge Church Hymns, 1871, and others, sometimes with the Salisbury Hymn Book doxology, changed to another, and at other times without any, as in the Sarum Hymnal, 1868, and the author's (posthumous) Miscellaneous Poems, 1869, p. 114. Its use is extensive.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
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