Lead Thou Me On
Today Neal Obstat posted the lyrics to the wonderful song “Lead, Kindly Light”, together with a beautiful musical rendition of the text. The words to this song come from the poem “The Pillar of Cloud” by John Henry Newman, a Catholic priest who was recently beatified.
I don’t know how, but this song somehow managed to fly beneath my radar for the past thirty years, but I’ve been captivated by it all afternoon, as it’s a perfect song for a Restless Pilgrim like me…
Lead, kindly Light, amid th’encircling gloom, lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home; lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me…
Meantime, along the narrow rugged path, Thyself hast trod,
Lead, Savior, lead me home in childlike faith, home to my God.
To rest forever after earthly strife
In the calm light of everlasting life.
After a little bit of googling, I found out a little bit about the background to the song. It turns out that Newman penned the words while he was ill in Italy:
“Before starting from my inn, I sat down on my bed and began to sob bitterly. My servant, who had acted as my nurse, asked what ailed me. I could only answer, ‘I have a work to do in England.’ I was aching to get home, yet for want of a vessel I was kept at Palermo for three weeks. I began to visit the churches, and they calmed my impatience, though I did not attend any services.
At last I got off in an orange boat, bound for Marseilles. We were becalmed for whole week in the Straits of Bonifacio, and it was there that I wrote the lines, Lead, Kindly Light, which have since become so well known”
