Stratfield, through every age

One of my all-time favorite Sacred Harp tunes is Stratfield by Ezra Goff. It is a great minor fuging tune, with a great stanza from Isaac Watts on Psalm 90.

Ezra Whiting Goff was born in Rehoboth, Massachusetts, May 26, 1760. Goff served as a fifer during the Revolutionary War. In 1789 he married Mehitable Bliss (1771–1835). They lived in Massachusetts, then moved to Vermont, then New York, and finally to Michigan in 1826. Ezra Goff died at age 68 on August 28, 1828 in Lenawee County, Michigan. He and his wife, as well as their son Timothy and his wife, Sally Waite, were buried on the Goff Farm in Lenawee County.

Several of Goff’s tunes, including Bedford, Derry, Granville, Paradise, and Townshend, appeared in The Village Compilation of Sacred Music by Daniel Belknap, 1806. Stratfield appeared first in The Worcester Collection of Sacred Harmony compiled by Isaiah Thomas and published in 1786. It is the only tune by Goff in The Sacred Harp.

Isaac Watts paraphrased and metered Psalm 90 in the poem which he titled “Man mortal, and God eternal” and included the subtitle or description, “A mournful song at a funeral.” This Long Meter hymn of 8 stanzas (see below) appeared in The Psalms and Hymns of Isaac Watts of 1719.

1. Through every age, eternal God,
Thou art our rest, our safe abode;
High was thy throne ere heav’n was made,
Or earth thy humble footstool laid.

2. Long hadst thou reigned ere time began,
Or dust was fashioned to a man;
And long thy kingdom shall endure
When earth and time shall be no more.

3. But man, weak man, is born to die,
Made up of guilt and vanity;
Thy dreadful sentence, Lord, was just,
“Return, ye sinners, to your dust.”

4. A thousand of our years amount
Scarce to a day in thine account;
Like yesterday’s departed light,
Or the last watch of ending night.

5. Death, like an overflowing stream,
Sweeps us away; our life’s a dream,
An empty tale, a morning flower,
Cut down and withered in an hour.

6. Our age to seventy years is set;
How short the time! how frail the state!
And if to eighty we arrive,
We rather sigh and groan than live.

7. But O how oft thy wrath appears,
And cuts off our expected years!
Thy wrath awakes our humble dread;
We fear the power that strikes us dead.

8. Teach us, O Lord, how frail is man;
And kindly lengthen out our span,
Till a wise care of piety
Fit us to die, and dwell with thee.

Words from Watts’s Psalm 90 are also used with 50a Mortality by Daniel Read (stanzas 5, 6, and 8), and 181 Exit by P. Sherman (stanzas 5-8).