Isaac Watts wrote the following hymn and called it “A Funeral Thought.” It appears in his Hymns and Spiritual Songs, Hymn LXIII, Book II (London: J. Humphreys, 1707, page 137). For a little more about Watts, see “Happy Birthday, Isaac.” The hymn provides a solemn and serious look at death, which comes to all – and comes to all alike, regardless of place, pride, or position.
Mine Ears, attend the Cry,
“Ye Living Men, come view the Ground,
Where you must shortly lie.”
2. “Princes, this Clay must be your Bed,
In spite of all your Tow’rs;
The Tall, the Wise, the Reverend head,
Must lie as low as ours.”
3. Great God, is this our certain Doom?
And are we still secure?
Still walking downwards to our Tomb,
And yet prepare no more?
4. Grant us the Powers of quickening Grace
To fit our Souls to fly,
Then when we drop this dying Flesh,
We’ll rise above the Sky.
In The Sacred Harp (No. 162 in all books), we sing Watts’s hymn to a tune called Plenary – which is an arrangement of the well-known Auld Lang Syne. The arrangement that appears in The Sacred Harp is by A. Clark (believed to be Alexander C. Clark). The song first appeared in 1839 in The American Harmony, by Andrew W. Johnson. The alto was written by Minnie Floyd for the 1902 W. M. Cooper Revision of The Sacred Harp.
Not much is known of A. Clark, but J. S. James (early Sacred Harp editor and biographer) believed that he was the same person A. C. Clark, the initials as they appeared with the tune Essay in The Sacred Harp (No. 157). He further thought that Clark was related to William Walker and B. F. White (presumably by marriage and/or to their spouses).
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