Friends Separated For a Season

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Friend after friend departs

Author: James Montgomery
Published in 226 hymnals

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Audio files: MIDI

Representative Text

1 Friend after friend departs:
Who hath not lost a friend?
There is no union here of hearts,
That finds not here an end:
Were this frail world our only rest,
Living or dying, none were blest.

2 Beyond the flight of time,
Beyond the reign of death,
There surely is some blessèd clime,
Where life is not a breath,
Nor life's affections, transient fire,
Whose sparks fly upward to expire.

3 There is a world above,
Where parting is unknown;
A whole eternity of love
Formed for the good alone;
And faith beholds the dying here
Translated to that glorious sphere.

4 Thus star by star declines,
Till all are passed away;
As morning high and higher shines
To pure and perfect day;
Nor sink those stars in empty night,
But hide themselves in heaven's own light.

Amen.

Source: Book of Worship with Hymns and Tunes #574

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Author: James Montgomery

James Montgomery (b. Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, 1771; d. Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, 1854), the son of Moravian parents who died on a West Indies mission field while he was in boarding school, Montgomery inherited a strong religious bent, a passion for missions, and an independent mind. He was editor of the Sheffield Iris (1796-1827), a newspaper that sometimes espoused radical causes. Montgomery was imprisoned briefly when he printed a song that celebrated the fall of the Bastille and again when he described a riot in Sheffield that reflected unfavorably on a military commander. He also protested against slavery, the lot of boy chimney sweeps, and lotteries. Associated with Christians of various persuasions, Montgomery supported missio… Go to person page >

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First Line:	Friend after friend departs
Title:	Friends Separated For a Season
Author:	James Montgomery
Meter:	6.6.8.6.8.8
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Notes

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)

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