Old Age, With All Its Sickly Train

Representative Text

1 Old age, with all its sickly train,
Soon makes its dread approach;
Languor, debility and pain,
Insensibly encroach.

2 Life’s gaieties have charms no more,
Its pleasures but appall:
The busy scenes and toils are o’er,
The honey turned to gall.

3 The lucid orbs of vision fail,
And give a glimmering light;
Successive clouds of grief prevail,
Transforming day to night.

4 Associates and friends once dear,
On earth are known no more;
Minds uncongenial now appear,
A race unknown before.

5 How dark the scene, how full of woe,
Alas for hoary age;
Yet grace will still a balm bestow,
Their sorrows to assuage.

6 There is a friend who still abides,
More dear than all that’s lost:
And he who in this friend confides,
May yet of comforts boast.

7 ’Tis Jesus, who will ne’er forsake,
But make His friends His care;
To Him your griefs and sorrows take,
And He your griefs will share.

8 Soon will He bring your weary feet
To His eternal rest;
Then shall your joys be all complete,
When in His mansion blessed.

Source: The Cyber Hymnal #15782

Author: Benjamin Beddome

Benjamin Beddome was born at Henley-in Arden, Warwickshire, January 23, 1717. His father was a Baptist minister. He studied at various places, and began preaching in 1740. He was pastor of a Baptist society at Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire, until his death in 1795. In 1770, he received the degree of M.A. from the Baptist College in Providence, Rhode Island. He published several discourses and hymns. "His hymns, to the number of 830, were published in 1818, with a recommendation from Robert Hall." Montgomery speaks of him as a "writer worthy of honour both for the quantity and the quality of his hymns." --Annotations of the Hymnal, Charles Hutchins, M.A. 1872.… Go to person page >

Text Information

First Line: Old age, with all its sickly train
Title: Old Age, With All Its Sickly Train
Author: Benjamin Beddome
Meter: 8.6.8.6
Source: Hymns Adapted to Public Worship (London: Burton & Briggs, 1818)
Language: English
Copyright: Public Domain

Tune

NUN DANKET ALL (Crüger 16512)

Composed by Johann Crüger (PHH 42) as a setting for Paul Gerhardt's "Nun danket all’ und bringet Ehr," GRÄFENBERG was first published in the 1647 edition of Crüger's Praxis Pietatis Melica. The tune is arbitrarily named after a water-cure spa in Silesia, Austria, which became famous in the 1820…

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The Cyber Hymnal #15782
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The Cyber Hymnal #15782

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