Deathless spirit, now arise

Author: Augustus Toplady

Deathless principle, arise. A. M. Toplady, [ Death Anticipated.] This hymn first appeared in

“A Memoir of some Principal Circumstances in the Life and Death of the Rev. Augustus Montague Toplady, late Vicar of Broad Hembury, Devon. To which is added, written by himself, the Dying Believer's Address to his soul, and his own last Will and Testament. London, Pr. for J. Matthews, 1778, pr. 6d."

On p. 24 of this Memoir we read:

"The following soliloquy, written some years ago by Mr. Toplady upon the death of a valued friend, has been thought so apposite to himself in his own dying hour that it is presented without any further apology."

After a sentence referring to the Emperor Hadrian, and his poem, "Animula, vagula, blandula," &c, and a note embodying Pope's translation of Hadrian's "Animula”, &c, and of "Musculus Versus," the poem, "Deathless principle, arise" follows, in stanzas of irregular length. It was subsequently shaped into 6 stanzas of 8 lines, and in this form is given in D. Sedgwick's reprint of Toplady's Hymns and Sacred Poems, 1860, p. 165. In its full form it is found in many collections, both old and new, but usually for private use. In some American collections a cento is given beginning: “Deathless spirit, now arise," as in Dr. Hatfield's Church Hymn Book, N. Y., 1872, whilst in others, as Longfellow & Johnson's Unitarian Hymns of the Spirit, Boston, 1864, there is a second cento, "Burst thy shackles! drop thy clay! "

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

Timeline