Thou art gone to the grave! but we will not deplore thee. Bishop R. Heber. [Death and Burial.] Was written in Decem¬ber, 1818, on the death of his daughter, aged six months. (Memoirs, volines i. p. 501.) So far as is at present known its earliest publication was in the Rev. Carus Wilson's Friendly Visitor, for August, 1824. It is also found, with variations, in stanza iii. in a volume of Sacred Poetry, Edin.: W. Oliphant, N.D. In 1827, the text, as in the Friendly Visitor, was included in Bp. Heber's posthumous Hymns, p. 150. It is rendered into Latin by R. Bingham in his Hymnologia Christiana Latina, 1871, as "Mortuos inter resides, et absens."
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
Reginald Heber was born in 1783 into a wealthy, educated family. He was a bright youth, translating a Latin classic into English verse by the time he was seven, entering Oxford at 17, and winning two awards for his poetry during his time there. After his graduation he became rector of his father's church in the village of Hodnet near Shrewsbury in the west of England where he remained for 16 years. He was appointed Bishop of Calcutta in 1823 and worked tirelessly for three years until the weather and travel took its toll on his health and he died of a stroke. Most of his 57 hymns, which include "Holy, Holy, Holy," are still in use today.
-- Greg Scheer, 1995… Go to person page >
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