Henry Francis Lyte

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For other persons with similar names, see Henry Lyte

Henry Francis Lyte (June 1, 1793 - November 20, 1847) was an Anglican divine and hymn-writer.

Lyte was born to Thomas and Anna Lyte on a farm at Ednam, near Kelso, Scotland.^[1] Thomas Lyte deserted the family shortly after making arrangements for his two oldest sons to attend Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh; Anna moved to London, where both she and her youngest son soon died.

Lyte later studied at Trinity College, Dublin. He took Anglican holy orders in 1815, and for some time held a curacy near Wexford. In 1817 he was a curate in Cornwall married to Anne who came from Monaghan in Ireland. Owing to bad health he came to England, and after several changes settled, in 1823, in the parish of Lower Brixham, a fishing village in Devon where he helped educate Lord Salisbury, who would become British prime minister no less than three times.

In poor health throughout his life, he had consumption, probably due to the damp climate of northern Europe. He visited Continental Europe often, but kept writing, mainly religious poetry and hymns. In 1844 his health finally gave way. After his last service, he penned his most famous hymn Abide With Me. He died just two weeks later in 1847 in Nice in southern France, at age 54, and was buried there.

Lyte's first work was Tales in Verse illustrative of Several of the Petitions in the Lord's Prayer (1826), which was written at Lymington and was commended by Wilson in the Noctes Ambrosianae. He next published (1833) a volume Poems, chiefly Religious, and in 1834 a little collection of psalms and hymns entitled The Spirit of the Psalms.

After his death, a volume of Remains with a memoir was published, and the poems contained in this, with those in Poems, chiefly Religious, were afterwards issued in one volume (1868). His best known hymns are:

• Abide with me! fast falls the eventide;
• Jesus, I my cross have taken;
• Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven; and
• Pleasant are Thy courts above.

[edit] References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.