Lyrics:

1. Come, ye disconsolate, where’er ye languish;
Come to the mercy seat, fervently kneel.
Here bring your wounded hearts; here tell your anguish.
Earth has no sorrow that heav’n cannot heal.

2. Joy of the desolate, Light of the straying,
Hope of the penitent, fadeless and pure!
Here speaks the Comforter, tenderly saying,
“Earth has no sorrow that heav’n cannot cure.”

3. Here see the Bread of Life; see waters flowing
Forth from the throne of God, pure from above.
Come to the feast of love; come, ever knowing
Earth has no sorrow but heav’n can remove.

Text: Thomas Moore, 1779-1852. Verse three, Thomas Hastings, 1784-1872
Music: Samuel Webbe, 1740-1816

-History: (Source: Wikipedia)

Written By: Thomas Hastings, Thomas Moore

Thomas Hastings (15 October 1784 – 15 May 1872) was an American composer, primarily an author of hymn tunes of which the best known isToplady for the hymn Rock of Ages. He was born to Dr. Seth and Eunice (Parmele) Hastings in Washington, Connecticut. He was a 3rd great-grandson of Thomas Hastings (colonist) who came from the East Anglia region of England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634.

Hastings moved to Clinton, New York, as a youth. In that region he began his career as a singing teacher, being himself largely a self-taught musician. Hastings compiled the hymn book Spiritual Songs with Lowell Mason in 1831, which included his most well-known hymn “Rock of Ages”. He then moved to New York City where he served as a choir master for 40 years, from 1832 to 1872. Hastings was a prolific composer, writing some 1000 hymn tunes over his career, and what Mason calls the “simple, easy, and solemn” style of his music remains a major influence on the hymns of the Protestant churches to this day.

Hastings’ 1822 Dissertation on Musical Taste, the first full musical treatise by an American author, was a notable voice in the shift in American music toward the models of German music rather than British; as “one of the first spokespersons for the cultivated tradition of American music” he emphasized the science and philosophical mission of music above the looser and more folk-based music of his predecessors. While Hastings’ first compilation still showed strong evidence of adherence to the British tradition, later works would include many German songs, and what older hymns and other settings he did include had the harmonies completely rewritten to conform to German ideals of classical music.

In addition to his composition and compiling of tunebooks for use in the singing schools, Hastings founded the Musical Magazine, a periodical he edited from 1835 to 1837; his early writings on church music for the Western Recorder, which he began editing in 1823, had given him the prior experience as well as establishing his musical and professional credibility around its home base of Utica, New York and the surrounding areas.

Hastings died in New York in 1872 and is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery.

Thomas Moore (28 May 1779 – 25 February 1852) was an Irish poet, singer, songwriter, and entertainer, now best remembered for the lyrics of The Minstrel Boy and The Last Rose of Summer. He was responsible, with John Murray, for burning Lord Byron‘s memoirs after his death. In his lifetime he was often referred to as Anacreon Moore.

Music By: Samuel Webbe

Samuel Webbe (1740 – May 25, 1816) was an English composer.

Born in Minorca in 1740, Webbe was brought up in London. His father died when he was still a baby and his mother returned to London where she raised Webbe in difficult circumstances. At the age of eleven he was apprenticed to a cabinet maker, and during the first year of his apprenticeship his mother died. Webbe determined to educate himself. He first discovered his aptitude for music when called on to repair the case of a harpsichord. During the course of the repair work he taught himself to play the instrument. Near the end of the job he was overheard playing it. As a result of this incident he turned to the study of music under Carl Barbandt.

In 1766, he was given a prize medal by the Catch Club for his “O that I had wings’, and in all he obtained twenty-seven medals for as many canons, catches, and glees, including “Discord, dire sister”, “Glory be to the Father”, “Swiftly from the mountain’s brow”, and “To thee all angels”. Other glees like “When winds breathe soft”, “Thy voice, O Harmony”, and “Would you know my Celia’s charms” are even better known. A Roman Catholic, in 1776 he succeeded George Paxton as organist of the Sardinian Embassy Chapel, a position which he held until 1795: he was also organist and choirmaster of chapel of the Portuguese Embassy in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the only place in London where the Catholic liturgy could be publicly celebrated. Webbe’s “An Essay on the Church Plain Chant” (1782), was followed by a “Collection of Motetts” (1792) and “A Collection of Masses for Small Choirs” (1795), both of which were extensively used in Catholic churches throughout Great Britain and more widely through the 19th century. If not of a very high order, they are at least devotional, and historically important in terms of the start of the revival of Roman Catholic liturgical music in England. Some of his motets and hymns are still sung in Catholic and Anglican churches today: the (Anglican) “English Hymnal” included eight musical settings by Webbe, and “Liturgical Hymns Old and New” (1999) widely used today in English Catholic churches also includes eight of his works, including popular settings of “O Salutaris Hostia” and “Tantum Ergo” for the Catholic service of Benediction. His hymn tune Melcombe, often sung to the words New Every Morning is the Love is also regularly heard in Anglican and Catholic churches today. Webbbe also published nine books of glees, between the years 1764 and 1798, and some songs. Arguably his glees are his best claim on posterity, though his church music was particularly influential. He wrote one opera, The Speechless Wife, which premiered at Covent Garden on May 22, 1794.^[1]