The Music of His Steps

Following find "The Music of His Steps (The Itinerant's Death)" written by Samuel Wakefield in 1854. In it Wakefield describes the perils known all too well to 18th & 19th century itinerants and their families. The family anxiously awaits his return:

1. The music of his steps was sought,
His time had come, and he came not;
His little ones were wont to greet,
The sound of his returning feet.
They waited long, were waiting still,
To see him hastening o'er the hill,
Across the brook, and to the door,
His manly face with joy spread o'er.

2. He was a faithful man of God,
And in his Saviour's footsteps trod;
Stern duty bade him often stray
From those who near his bosom lay.
But when from anxious toils returned,
Kind hearts with strong affection burned;
The husband's and the father's voice,
In every ear poured richest joys.

3. But ah! those ears no more shall hear
That voice to wife and children dear;
Those eyes of love shall never more
Look on that face with joy spread o'er;
Shall never see their loved one come,
To cheer their hearth and bless their home.
Low lies his form beneath the sod;
High lives his spirit with his God.

4. Yet still they look with glistening eye,
Till lo! a herald hastens nigh;
He comes the tale of woe to tell,
How he, their prop and glory, fell;
How died he in a stranger’s room,
How strangers laid him in the tomb,
How spoke he with his latest breath,
And loved and blessed them all in death.

Wakefield also wrote music for this hymn, which can be found HERE.