1 Come, Thou Desire of all Thy saints,
Our humble strains attend,
While with our praises and complaints,
Low at Thy feet we bend.
2 How should our songs, like those above,
With warm devotion rise?
How should our souls, on wings of love,
Mount upward to the skies?
3 Come Lord, Thy love alone can raise
In us the heavenly flame;
Then shall our lips resound Thy praise,
Our hearts adore Thy name!
4 Now, Savior, let Thy glory shine,
And fill Thy dwellings here
Till life, and love, and joy divine,
A heaven on earth appear.
5 When shall our hearts, enraptured, say
"Come, great Redeemer, come,
And bring the bright, the glorious day
That calls Thy children home?"
Amen.
Source: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal #104
First Line: | Come, Thou desire of all Thy saints |
Title: | Come, Thou Desire of All the Saints |
Author: | Anne Steele |
Meter: | 8.6.8.6 |
Language: | English |
Copyright: | Public Domain |
Come, Thou desire of all Thy saints. Anne Steele. [Public Worship.] This hymn appeared with the heading, "Intreating the Presence of Christ in His Churches," in the author's Poems on Subjects chiefly Devotional, 1760, vol. i. p. 76 (2nd ed., 1780, vol. i. p. 76). In 1769 it was reprinted in the Bristol Collection of Ash & Evans, and was thus brought into common use. Its American use is much greater than that in Great Britain. It is usually abbreviated, and is sometimes given, as in the Church Pastorals, Boston, U. S., 1864, as "Come, O Thou King of all Thy saints." This cento is made of stanzas i., vi., vii. Original text in Sedgwick's reprint of Miss Steele's Hymns, 1863.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)