A Voice From the Desert

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A voice from the desert comes awful and shrill

Author: William Hamilton Drummond
Tune: GORDON (Gordon)
Published in 44 hymnals

Printable scores: PDF, Noteworthy Composer
Audio files: MIDI

Piano/Organ
	Four Hymn Meditations

Instrumental
	Praise...With Stringed Instruments

Handbells
	QUIET HYMN MEDITATIONS

Representative Text

A Voice from the desert comes awful and shrill;
The Lord is advancing; prepare ye the way!
The word of Jehovah he comes to fulfil,
And o’er the dark world pour the splendor of day.

Bring down the proud mountain, though towering to heaven,
And be the low valley exalted on high;
The rough path and crooked be made smooth and even,
For, Zion! your King, your Redeemer, is nigh.

The beams of salvation his progress illume,
The lone, dreary wilderness sings of her God;
The rose and the myrtle there suddenly bloom,
And the olive of peace spreads its branches abroad.

Source: A Book of Hymns for Public and Private Devotion (15th ed.) #103

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Author: William Hamilton Drummond

Drummond, William Hamilton, D.D., son of an Irish physician, was born at Ballyclare, Antrim, Ireland, 1772, and died at Dublin, Oct. 16, 1865. Educated for the ministry at the University of Glasgow, he became, in 1793, the pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church, Belfast, and in 1816, of the Strand Street Chapel, Dublin. His poetical works include:— (1) Juvenile Poems, 1797; (2) Trafalger, 1805; (3) The Giant's Causeway, 1811; (4) Clontarf, 1817; (5) Who are the Happy? a Poem, on the Christian Beatitudes, with other Poems on Sacred Subjects, 1818. In 1818 A Selection of Psalms & Hymns for the Use of the Presbytery of Antrim, and the Congregation of Strand Street, Dublin, was published at Belfast. This Selection was probably edited… Go to person page >

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Text Information

Text Information

First Line:	A voice from the desert comes awful and shrill
Title:	A Voice From the Desert
Author:	William Hamilton Drummond
Meter:	11.11.11.11
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Tune

GORDON (Gordon)

In 1870 Featherstone's text came to the attention of Adoniram J. Gordon (b. New Hampton, NH, 1836; d. Boston, MA, 1895), an evangelical preacher who was compiling a new Baptist hymnal. Because he was unhappy with the existing melody for this text, Gordon composed this tune; as he wrote, "in a moment…

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