mount! I fly!
O grave where is thy victory?
O death, where is thy sting?

_THE TUNE._

The old anthem, "The Dying Christian," or "The Dying Christian to his
Soul," which first made this lyric familiar in America as a musical
piece, will never be sung again except at antique entertainments, but it
had an importance in its day.

Beginning in quadruple time on four flats minor, it renders the first
stanza in flowing concords largo affettuoso, and a single bass fugue,
Then suddenly shifting to one flat, major, duple time, it executes the
second stanza, "Hark! they whisper" ... "What is this, etc.," in
alternate pianissimo and forte phrases; and finally, changing to triple
time, sings the third triumphant stanza, andante, through staccato and
fortissimo. The shout in the last adagio, on the four final bars, "O
Death! O Death!" softening with "where is thy sting?" is quite in the
style of old orchestral magnificence.

Since "The Dying Christian" ceased to appear in church music, the poem,
for some reason, seems not to have been recognized as a hymn. It is,
however, a Christian poem, and a true lyric of hope and consolation,
whatever the character of the author or however pagan the original that
suggested it.

The most that is now known of Edward Harwood, the composer of the
anthem, is that he was an English musician and psalmodist, born near
Blackburn, Lancaster Co., 1707, and died about 1787.

"YOUR HARPS, YE TREMBLING SAINTS."

This hymn of Toplady,--unlike "A Debtor to Mercy Alone," and "Inspirer
and Hearer of Prayer," both now little used,--stirs no controversial
feeling by a single line of his aggressive Calvinism. It is simply a
song of Christian gratitude and joy.

Your harps, ye trembling saints
Down from the willows take;
Loud to the praise of Love Divine
Bid every string awake.

Though in a foreign land,
We are not far from home,
And nearer to our house above
We every moment come.

* * * * *

Blest is the man, O God,
That stays himself on Thee,
Who waits for Thy salvation, Lord,
Shall Thy salvation see.

_THE TUNE._

"Olmutz" was arranged by Lowell Mason from a Gregorian chant. He set it
himself to Toplady's hymn, and it seems the natural music for it. The
words are also sometimes written and sung to Jonathan Woodman's "State
St."

Jonathan Call Woodman was born in Newburyport, Mass.,