ST. AGNES (Dykes)

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ST. AGNES (Dykes)

Composer: John Bacchus Dykes (1866)
Published in 163 hymnals

Printable scores: PDF, Sibelius
Audio files: MIDI

Piano/Organ
	I Stand Amazed in the Presence

Composer: John Bacchus Dykes

John Bacchus Dykes (10 March 1823 Kingston upon Hull – 22 January 1876 Ticehurst, Sussex) was an English clergyman and hymnist. He was born in Hull, England, the fifth child and third son of William Hey Dykes and his wife Elizabeth Dykes (née Huntington), and a younger brother of the poet and hymnist Eliza Alderson. By the age of 10, he was the assistant organist at St John's Church in Drypool, Hull, where his grandfather, the Rev. Thomas Dykes, was vicar. He learned the violin and the piano.[1] He studied at Wakefield and St Catharine's College, Cambridge, earning a BA in Classics in 1847.[2] He cofounded the Cambridge University Musical Society. He was ordained as curate of Malton in 1847. For a short time, he was canon of Durham Ca… Go to person page >

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Tune Information

Composer:	John Bacchus Dykes (1866)
Meter:	8.6.8.6
Incipit:	33323 47155 53225
Key:	A♭ Major

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Texts

Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee

Jesus! the very thought of Thee
With sweetness fills my breast;
But sweeter far Thy face to see,
And in Thy presence rest.
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Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove

Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly dove,
With all thy quickening powers,
Kindle a flame of sacred love
In these cold hearts of ours.
Go to text page >

All texts published with ST. AGNES (Dykes)^ top

Alternative Tunes

More tunes with meter 8.6.8.6 ^ top

Notes

John B. Dykes (PHH 147) composed ST. AGNES for [Jesus the Very Thought of Thee]. Dykes named the tune after a young Roman Christian woman who was martyred in A.D. 304 during the reign of Diocletian. St. Agnes was sentenced to death for refusing to marry a nobleman to whom she said, "I am already engaged to Christ, to Him alone I keep my troth." The tune was published in John Grey's Hymnal for Use in the English Church (1866).

ST. AGNES is a simple tune, best sung in two long lines and in harmony. To encourage meditation on the text (as was the practice with its Latin original), consider having the congregation follow the text of stanza 2 ("No voice can sing") without singing, but simply listening to it as played by the organ.

--Psalter Hymnal Handbook, 1987

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