“Desiring to know and love him more” is one of Anne Steele’s “Hymns on Various Subjects” found in her Poems on Subjects Chiefly Devotional: In Two Volumes (London: J. Buckland and J. Ward, 1760). Her poetry was initially published under the pen name “Theodosia.”
Whom I unseen adore,
Unveil thy beauties to my sight,
That I may love thee more.
2. Thy glory o’er creation shines;
But in thy sacred word
I read, in fairer, brighter lines,
My bleeding, dying Lord.
3. ’Tis here, whene’er my comforts droop,
And sins and sorrows rise,
Thy love, with cheerful beams of hope,
My fainting heart supplies.
4. But ah, too soon, the pleasing scene
Is clouded o’er with pain;
My gloomy fears rise dark between,
And I again complain.
5. Jesus, my Lord, my life, my light,
O come with blissful ray,
Break radiant through the shades of night,
And chase my fears away.
6. Then shall my soul with rapture trace
The wonders of thy love;
But the full glories of thy face
Are only known above.
Anne Steele was born in 1716. Her father William Steele was a timber merchant, as well as the pastor of the Particular Baptist congregation at Broughton in Hampshire for 60 years. She united with the Broughton Church by experience and baptism when she was 14 years. In life she was long afflicted with the pains and suffering of poor health, but wrote many beautiful hymns out of her grief. In this hymn Steele expresses a deep desire to know more about Christ. This ought to be the since longing of every believer. She recognizes “the bleeding Lord” as the “lovely source of true delight.” The hymn is written in common meter, containing six stanzas. Melody Publications’ 2020 Psalms and Hymns and Spiritual Songs pairs it with the tune Rodmell, a traditional English melody printed in The English Hymnal, with Tunes (W. J. Birkbeck, Ralph Vaughan Williams, et al., London: Oxford University Press, 1906). Other hymns with which the hymn is sung include St Peter and Varina – but it may be sung with a good common meter tune with which you are more familiar.
Anne Steele wrote nearly 150 hymns. She also produced several metrical verses of psalms. She was the first woman hymn writer whose hymns came into wide use in hymnbooks in England and America. Anne died November 11, 1778, and is buried at St. Mary Churchyard, Broughton, Hampshire, England. J. R. Broome tells her story in the book A Bruised Reed: The Life and Times of Anne Steele. Her story is also one of the stories of four women told in Sharon James’s book In Trouble and In Joy. The book To Express the Ineffable: The Hymns and Spirituality of Anne Steele is a study of her hymns, written by Cynthia Y. Aalders.
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