Henry Francis Lyte was born at Ednam, a village situated on the Eden, a tributary of the Tweed near Kelso, Roxburghshire, on the 1st of June, 1793. He was educated at Portora, Inniskillen, and at Trinity College, Dublin, where he distinguished himself in three successive years by taking the English poem prize. Though at first intending to follow the medical profession he entered the Church (1815), and accepted a curacy at Taghmon, near Wexford, afterwards removing to Marazion, Cornwall (1817), where he married. Subsequently he held curacies at Lymington, Hampshire (1819), and Charlton, Devon, and finally took charge of the new parish of Lower Brixham, Devonshire, where he ministered for five-and-twenty years. His “Tales on the Lord’s Prayer in Verse,” written at Lymington, were published in 1826, his “Poems Chiefly Religious” in 1833, and his “Spirit of the Psalms,” a metrical version of the Psalter, in 1834. His “Remains,” containing poems, sermons, letters, etc., and a memoir by his daughter, was published in 1850, and a volume of his “Miscellaneous Poems” in 1868. He also published an edition of the poem of Henry Vaughan, with a memoir, in 1847.

Personal

  It was good for a young man to be in the society and under the influence of such a true gentleman, scholar, poet, and saint, to be impressed by the beauty of holiness, and to be so happily assured that the voice of joy and health is in the dwellings of the righteous. He was revered by all who knew him, especially by those whose sympathies he prized the most—the poor.

General

  Among her purest, choicest, and most gifted lyric poets, the Church of Christ will ever delight to number Henry Francis Lyte. His contributions to “the service of song in the house of the Lord,” and in the domestic sanctuary, have been numerous and excellent.

  A poet whose singular beauty of nature and true instinct for his art were not always adequately rendered in his verse.

  “Abide with Me.” This was the Swan Song of the Rev H. F. Lyte. He produced it on the evening of the Sunday on which he preached his last sermon. It is generally used as an evening hymn. It was not so intended. It refers to the evening of life, not of the day, and is more of a hymn for the dying than for those about to renew their strength by a night’s rest. It was sung at the burial of Professor Maurice, and is in constant use throughout the English-speaking world. Lyte is buried in Nice, and his grave is still sometimes sought out by pilgrims from far across the seas who attribute their conversion to this hymn.

  Lyte had a tender feeling for nature and a sense of the sublime, but he lacked originality and the creative power of imagination. His general poems have no permanent interest. His lines “On a Naval Officer buried in the Atlantic” have been praised, and have received musical setting at the hands of Sir Arthur Sullivan, but they remind one of Campbell, and suffer by the comparison, while the last verse approaches perilously near to bathos. “The Poet’s Plea” is one of the best of his longer poems, but it is too long for quotation. The best of his hymns are wholly admirable, and have become indispensable to the psalmody of the Church.