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Henry Francis Lyte

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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HENRY FRANCIS LYTE (1793-1847), Anglican divine and hymn-writer, was born near Kelso on the 1st of June 1793, and was educated at Enniskillen school and at Trinity College,, Dublin. He took orders in 1815, and for some time held a. curacy near Wexford. Owing to infirm health he came to England, and after several changes settled, in 1823, in the parish of Brixham. In 1844 his health finally gave way; and he died at Nice on the 20th of November 1847.

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 of 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."