The Turtle Dove

1. Hark! don’t you hear the turtle dove,
The token of redeeming love?
From hill to hill we hear the sound,
The neighbouring valleys echo round.
O Zion, hear the turtle dove,
The token of your Savior’s love!
She’s come the desert land to cheer,
And welcome in the jubil-year.

2. The winter’s past, the rain is o’er,
We feel the chilling winds no more;
The spring is come;—how sweet the view!
All things appear divinely new.
On Zion’s mount the watchmen cry,
“The resurrection’s drawing nigh:”
Behold, the nations from abroad,
Are flocking to the mount of God.

3. The trumpet sounds, both far and nigh;
O sinners, turn! why will ye die?
How can you spurn the gospel charms?
Enlist with Christ, gird on your arms.
These are the days that were foretold,
In ancient times, by prophets old:
They long’d to see this glorious light,
But all have died without the sight.

4. The latter days on us have come,
And fugitives are flocking home;
Behold them crowd the gospel road,
All pressing to the mount of God.
O yes! and I will join that band,
Now here’s my heart, and here’s my hand
With Satan’s band no more I’ll be,
But fight for Christ and liberty.

5. His banner soon will be unfurl’d,
And he will come to judge the world;
On Zion’s mountain we shall stand,
In Canaan’s fair, celestial land.
When sun and moon shall darken’d be,
And flames consume the land and sea,
When worlds on worlds together blaze,
We’ll shout, and loud hosannas raise.

As printed No. 154 in The Dover Selection of Spiritual Songs, Andrew Broaddus, Richmond, VA: R. I. Smith, 1831 – The Turtle Dove, L.M.D. In his book The Choice: in Two Parts, William Dossey names Daniel’s Selection as his source for the hymn. I have not found a copy of Daniel’s Selection, but this apparently is the book referenced below. If this is the original source, it may be that Robert Daniel wrote the hymn.

Daniel’s Selection, Robert Thomas Daniel (1773-1840), Raleigh, NC: Thomas Henderson, 1812.

The North Carolina Historical Review, Autumn 1962 (Christopher Crittenden, Editor in Chief)
XXV (October, 1905), 16-17, Charles E. Taylor noted that Robert Thomas Daniel published a 280-page book entitled “Daniel’s Selection” in Raleigh in 1812. It consisted of 176 hymns and 52 “Spiritual Songs.” In 1905 Taylor had a copy which he described as “well printed and strongly bound,” but recent efforts to locate this copy have been unsuccessful.

A completed subscription form. No copy of Daniel’s hymnal has been found, but Dr. Chas. E. Taylor, writing in the Wake Forest Student for October, 1905, described a copy which he then had before him. Entitled Daniel's Selection, this 280-page book was printed in Raleigh by Thomas Henderson in 1812. This subscription form is in the Bruce Gotten Collection of North Caroliniana at the University of North Carolina
Library.

Dictionary of North Carolina Biography: Volume 2, D-G, edited by William S. Powell, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1986, p. 11 says “Thirty-eight of the hymns were composed by Daniel himself.”

“A Biography of the Poetic Literature of North Carolina in 1906,” Hight C. Moore, The Farmer and Mechanic (Raleigh, North Carolina), Tuesday, November 20, 1906, page 5; Moore says that about 80 of the Selections are original, and that Mrs. Hardy Saunders assisted in the compilation.