Friend after friend departs. J. Mont¬gomery. [Death and the Hereafter.] In Montgomery's Poetical Works, 1841, vol. iii. p. 182, he has dated this poem 1824. It was published in his Pelican Island and Other Poems, 1827; and in his Poetical Works, 1828 and 1841, but was not given in the first copies of his Original Hymns, 1853. In later copies of the same year it replaced a cancelled hymn (“This shall be the children's cry"), but was omitted from the Index. It is in common use in Great Britain and America. Original text in Dr. Hatfield's Church Hymn Book, N. Y., 1872.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)