The Starry Firmament on High

British legalist Robert Grant (1779-1838) wrote “The Starry Firmament on High.” Though written earlier in the 1800s, the form of the hymn below is as it appears in Sacred Poems, By the Late Right Hon. Sir Robert Grant – published by his brother in 1839, and again by his children in 1868. There it is complete four stanzas in Long Meter Doubled. In many sources that use the hymn, it appears as four stanzas of Long Meter, without what is stanzas 2 and 3 below. In Sacred Poems it is titled simply “Psalm XIX,” with this notation:

(This is intended as a sequel or counterpart to the well-known hymn, ‘The Spacious Firmament;’ and corresponds to the latter portion of the 19th Psalm, as that hymn does to the former.)

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) wrote the hymn that begins “The spacious firmament on high.” An early tune suggested for this hymn is Orion by J. Zundel. The most common tune pairing seems to be with Uxbridge. This tune can be found on 265b in The Sacred Harp, 2012 Cooper Edition.

1. The starry firmament on high,
And all the glories of the sky,
Yet shine not to thy praise, O Lord,
So brightly as thy written word.
The hopes that holy word supplies,
Its truths divine and precepts wise—
In each a heavenly beam I see,
And every beam conducts to thee.

2. When, taught by painful proof to know
That all is vanity below,
The sinner roams from comfort far,
And looks in vain for sun or star;
Soft gleaming then those lights divine
Through all the cheerless darkness shine,
And sweetly to his ravished eye
Disclose the day-spring from on high.

3. The heart in sensual fetters bound,
And barren as the wintry ground,
Confesses, Lord, thy quickening ray;—
Thy word can charm the spell away,
With genial influence can beguile
The frozen wilderness to smile;
Bid living water o’er it flow,
And all be paradise below.

4. Almighty Lord! the sun shall fail,
The moon forget her nightly tale,
And deepest silence hush on high
The joyful chorus of the sky.
But, fixed for everlasting years,
Unmoved amid the wreck of spheres,
Thy word shall shine in cloudless day,
When heaven and earth have passed away.

Robert Grant was born in India, where his father was a director of the East India company. He was educated at Cambridge, and later served as governor of Bombay. He was knighted in 1834. Grant died at Dalpoorie, India in 1838, and is buried at Saint Marys Church in Pune, Maharashtra, India. Grant’s most famous hymn is “O Worship the King.”